There's a huge opportunity for growth In India: Lamborghini CEO

'What we can see in the Indian market is that we have more and more ultra-high net individuals from the second generation too entering the market,' says Stephan Winkelmann

After the two versions of the Huracán and a facelift of the Urus this year, Automobili Lamborghini, the Italian super sports carmaker will pull the plug on pure ICE model from 2023. The year 2021 was a record year for Lamborghini in India and globally. Stephan Winkelmann, global chairman and CEO, tells Shally Seth Mohile that the demand in every market, including India, is much higher than it can produce. Being a highly emotional brand, the company has to manage the transition to hybrid and electric very carefully. Edited excerpts…

The year 2021 was a record year for Lamborghini in India and globally, what do you really attribute this to? What does 2022 look like?

This is due to the solidity and the image of our brand not only in India but worldwide. What we can see in the Indian market is that we have more and more ultra-high net individuals from the second generation too entering the market. The average age here is younger than other countries.

For the year 2022, we are on track --- selling more than we can produce. But it’s very difficult to make a forecast because we are here in Europe in the middle of a war and we might also be affected in terms of supply chain and economical changes coming up. So are not willing to forecast. The situation is not clear and we have to wait on what is going to happen in next weeks and months.

How important will India be as a market? Given the fact the relatively small volume share it has in your overall sales?

For us, the size of the market is not paramount. I can tell you we started in a lot of markets with very few numbers and then we had tremendous growth year on year. I think in India there’s a huge opportunity for growth, because there's a lot of wealth here and we will see how this is developing. In percentage terms, we had the largest growth in this market last year—86 per cent leading up to 69 cars.

We have three dealers—one each in New Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai. I think there is a lot we can do. Also, in terms of opportunities to have customers linked to the brand is something we always have to look at.

We will never be aggressive in terms of sales. There is demand in every market globally that is higher than what we can produce. We have to keep it this way. The growth and the infrastructure, which is an asset for our type of cars so that people can use them a lot more on a daily basis, have to come together. I am very much looking forward to having more cars sold in India than we are doing now. I am very positive about this despite the situation we are in.

Lamborghini is preparing for a big shift from ICE to hybrid to electric. How well prepared are emerging markets like India where the policy favours pure EVs?

Our first step is hybridisation because a brand like ours is very emotional and we have to be sure that every step we take is the right one and is going to be successful. We have to strike a balance between maintaining the high level of customer expectations and the legal requirements. Looking at the numbers in India, we believe there is a growing potential for the future even if we are not turning our line up into full electric cars right now because we don’t think this is the right time to do it. We don’t think our customers will appreciate going full electric at this time going full electric.

What sort of waiting period/ order books the brand is seeing in India, how does it compare with the peers?

We have an average of 1 year waiting time in all the markets. In India too we are amongst the top in terms of attractiveness of the brand. Hence our waiting time for a new car in comparison to our competitors is a bit longer, because the demand is so high

If you can give us an outlook on the overall super luxury car market globally and in India?

This is a highly demand driven market in comparison to other segments. And this is true for the super sports car segment as well as for the high-end SUV segment. So what we see as a general trend for the (without our looking into the year 2022) the decade to come is a consistent stable growth in the two segments in the years to come. We don’t have trends for every single market but given the results of last year and all the intakes we see coupled with demography here -- both in terms of young wealthy people and wealth in general, we think that there is a growing demand also in the India market in years to come.