Oct. 9 – German luxury car maker Audi’s Managing Director for India, Benoit Tiers, predicts that India will be the fifth-largest market by 2015 and that company sales will grow by 80 percent.
In an interview with The Economic Times, Tiers downplayed his growth projections by saying the company wants to be profitable rather than grabbing the market share from rivals BMW and Mercedes.
He said: “Audi in India is a long term commitment and my target is not to be number one in terms of sales figures. My aim is to establish the brand and build service and quality, so that the result will impact sales. We may be late entrants in to the Indian market, but our rate of growth is higher. We’re looking at being profitable first. We sold around 1,050 cars in India last year, logging a 120 percent growth.”
Tiers believes in India and China’s growth potential and said the company will be preparing for it. He says: “Our estimation says that India will be the fifth largest automobile market in the world by 2015. We sold 1,20,000 cars in China last year. ”
“India will soon go that way, though it will not happen over night. We are studying the market and we want to be ready for it. “
