Luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz is likely to witness stagnancy in sales from the Indian market in 2009, according to Wilfried Aulbur, managing director and chief executive officer of Mercedes-Benz India.
“2008 had been a good year for us with our sales touching 4,000 units. However, the first half of 2009 was difficult, selling about 1,500 units due to the economic slowdown and inadequate supply of new models. We believe that India will come out of the recession much faster and the second half of 2009 will be much better in terms of sales. But, we may not surpass last year's sales figures,” Aulbur told mediapersons.
Inaugurating the company’s 30,000-sft workshop in Hyderabad on Monday, he said the company was lining up Rs 450 crore investment in augmenting its sales and after-sales network and in ramping up its research and development (R&D) centre in Bangalore over the next two years, which will make it the second biggest R&D centre for the company globally.
Mercedes-Benz, along with its network partners, has indicated an investment of Rs 150 crore in network expansion and upgradation by this year end.
“Besides, we intend to add 300 engineers to the existing 200 at our Bangalore R&D centre by the end of this year and 500 more by next year. Engineers at the Bangalore centre are currently working on active and passive safety, crash tests, diesel technologies and human impact modelling. Some work on localisation is happening too,” Aulbur said.
Stating that Mercedes-Benz India was making profits since 2000, he said the company currently has 38 variants in the 8,500-unit luxury market in the country and would shortly launch its new E-Class vehicle. “We don’t have plans to make any price adjustments to take on competitors like BMW,” he added.
