Swaraj Baggonkar Moneycontrol News
Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover has grabbed maximum market share in India while Audi has reported the biggest drop among the five luxury car players.
Data from 2016, 2017 and the first six months of 2018 show that market share of the two British brands in India jumped by 58 percent to 12.6 percent by end of June 2018, as against 8 percent clocked by end-2016.
Audi saw the biggest drop during the period. Its market share eroded by 29 percent to 16.7 percent by June 2018, as compared to 23.4 percent clocked in 2016. Jaguar Land Rover is now close to beating Audi for the third spot, as per latest data revealed by the two companies.
German giant Mercedes-Benz retains the top position, though its market share has remained stagnant at 40 percent. Mercedes-Benz is the biggest luxury car maker in India, followed by BMW and Audi.
Jaguar Land Rover sold 2,579 units in the January to June 2018 period, while Audi clocked sales of 3,423 units during the same period.
The gap between the two companies is down to 844 units by end of the first half of the year, from 3,922 units in 2017. Market sources say if JLR continues with its pace of growth in the second half of the year, it could beat Audi by the end of 2018.
JLR, the fourth largest luxury car maker, presently retails 11 models in India (Jaguar 5 cars and Land Rover 6 cars) compared with nine models of Audi. JLR has launched Range Rover Velar, Evoque Convertible and Model Year 2018 Range Rover and Range Rover Sport so far this year.
Swedish luxury car maker Volvo has also seen an increase in its market share during this year. On the back of new launches such as XC60, XC90 and S90, the company has increased share to 6 percent this year from 5.1 percent at the end of last year. Volvo recently launched the XC40, a step down sports utility vehicle that competes against the Audi Q3, Mercedes-Benz GLA and BMW X1.
The battle for the luxury car market this year is expected to be cut-throat with every company trying to outdo each other in the number of launches. JLR has promised to do ’10 product actions’ this year including new launches and update existing products.
Market leader Mercedes-Benz has also promised to do 10 launches this year.
The luxury car industry marked a growth of 11 percent during the six months ended June at nearly 20,500 units. This comes on the back a higher cess (25 percent) on luxury cars slapped after implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the middle of last year coupled with a five percentage points increase in customs duty on completely knocked down (CKD) kits to 15 percent.
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