BMW sees tremendous development potential in India

BMW, a German luxury manufacturer, is increasing its efforts in India in light of the best-ever yearly sales in 2022. Given the country's low penetration, BMW sees "great growth potential for market leadership" in this market. BMW India sold 35 percent more vehicles in 2022 than in 2021 (BMWs and Minis combined), totaling 11,981 units, of which 11,268 were BMWs. This marked the highest number of deliveries in the company's history since its arrival in 2007.

Its two-wheeler brand Motorrad also had its best-ever sales delivering 7,282 units, a full 40 percent growth on-year. Though India is likely to overtake Japan to become the third-largest auto market in the world after China and the US in 2022 selling more than 4.25 million units, there is nothing to write home about the luxury segment which is just about 1 percent. Of this, the car volume stood at 3.8 million in 2022, excluding the units sold by luxury carmakers Mercedes, BMW and Volvo, according to data shared by industry body SIAM last week.

"I am happy that in 2022 India became one of our fastest growing markets in terms of volumes - clocking the best-ever sales since our entry in 2007 - and growth rates for all our brands here. I am pretty confident that India will continue to surprise us in 2023 as well," Jean-Philippe Parain, senior vice-president for Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at the BMW Group. Despite such record numbers, he said "India is not among the top 10 markets for us globally. But it has huge potential for faster and higher growth and become a lead market for us." He did not offer a timeline for the same.

When it comes to volumes, "India volume has never been so high and so is our optimism, which comes from the strong fundamentals of the very resilient economy, pro-growth policies of the government and the conducive regulatory environment," Parain said.

To build on the record growth, BMW has lined up as many as 18 launches for 2023 across its three brands-the mother brand BMW, the Mini and the bike brand Motorrad -- Parain said, adding three of the new launches will be electric to further build on its market leadership here. It already has three models on the road, making it the largest player in the luxe EV space.

Of these, five will be all-new launches (from BMW, the 7 Series, i7 Series, the X1, and the M2; and the R18 Transcontinental from the Motorrad stable) and four will be facelifts -- all from the BMW stable with the planned launch of the X7, 3 Series Gran Limousine, the X5 and the M4.
The year will also see nine variant launches, he said, adding of them six will be from the BMW stable and the rest from the Mini brand.
The company has already begun its market offensive this year launching the i7 Series on January 7 with three variants including the first-ever electric model from this platform.

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