Luxury vehicle maker Jaguar Land Rover has seen its customers grow in India. The company recorded a growth of 45 per cent in the first nine months of this year and expects to maintain the momentum, especially with new launches over the next one year. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime has also helped the company bring down the prices of its products. BusinessLine spoke toRohit Suri, Managing Director and President, Jaguar Land Rover India, on the sidelines of the launch of the ‘all new’ Discovery. Excerpts:

What is your view of the current scenario in India after GST, especially in the luxury car segment?

The first nine months have been extremely good for Jaguar Land Rover . We grew by 45 per cent. So, even the launch of GST on July 1 was received very well by the industry and customers, as it helped us bring down prices. The cascading impact of taxes was taken away and, therefore, we were able to reduce prices.

However, now, towards September-end, the government has once again kind of increased GST by raising the cess. So, that has dampened market enthusiasm a bit. We saw the impact of that in October. Clearly, there is a dampening of growth. We are clearly seeing the impact of cess increase. But, overall for us, I think the growth may not be exactly 45 per cent, but we expect a high double-digit growth going forward because we have added new products to our portfolio. We have launched the ‘all-new’ Discovery, which will be followed by Velar later this year/beginning of next year.

But around 3,000 units in nine months is big enough, looking at competitors like Mercedes-Benz and BMW?

No. I think in our case the main factor is that unlike other competition, we don’t have small cars. For example, we don’t have cars like BMW X1. We don’t have cars like Mercedes A-Class hatchback or B-Class. We don’t have cars like Audi A-3 below the A-4 level and these constitute almost about 30- 40 per cent of the overall luxury segment. So, if you discount that, then our market position now is strong. We are able to compete very effectively with products we have in our portfolio. Fortunately for us, most of our products are doing extremely well. I mean there are bookings in place for some of our products. If we had those, we would be easily Number 2 or Number 3 in terms of our market share. The moment we bring in a product which is rightly priced, we are able to get a very quick demand.

What about pricing…all your products are priced above ₹40 lakh…

The luxury market is clearly segmented, primarily on a price basis. So, there is this price segmentation. Let’s say there are some customers within the ₹40-60 lakh bracket, there are some who are within the ₹60-80 lakh bracket, then there are customers who are beyond ₹90-1.2-1.3 crore bracket, then there are others beyond that. So, as you go along, obviously the segment size becomes smaller and smaller. On the lower end, you have more customers because then the whole market expands. So, less than ₹30 lakh is a bigger set of customers and we are getting customers who are within the price segments that we are operating in.

You are assembling cars such as XFs and XEs in India, which led to lowering of prices. But again, there has been a change in the pricing scenario after the cess hike. So is there a concern that people may drop the idea to buy your products?

There is a little impact after the cess increase because we had to increase the prices again to an extent. After all, it’s your hard-earned money and you want to be careful when you are spending it. So, there is an impact. How much of this impact will really come through as we go forward, is yet to be seen. Like I said, in October, we have seen dampening of demand.

The government is now talking about electrification of cars and hybrids are now kind of history. So, what’s the offer from your side?

As far as JLR is concerned, I think our CEO, Ralph Speth, has already talked about it. JLR is preparing itself very well to cater to the demand for electric vehicles across the world. We will have products ready as far as our global portfolio is concerned, and the first in that line is going to be the I-Pace, which is going to be launched sometime next year.

As far as India is concerned, we are still waiting to hear what kind of policy the government comes up with — which is another five-six months away. Once we are confident that we have an ecosystem that can support us, it will not be very difficult to take cars from our global portfolio.

So, will it be launched in India at the same time as the global launch?

No. It is unlikely to come with the global launch because we must be sure that if we launch these cars in India they can be supported. We would not like our customers to be inconvenienced or suffer in any manner after having bought the cars, not being able to charge at various public points, etc. All these are going to be critical considerations before we launch the car in India.

What is unique about the ‘all-new’ Discovery and how important is it for the company?

It is a very important car for us because it plugs the gap in our current Land Rover portfolio. Our existing portfolio has the Discovery Sport (starting at ₹42 lakh) and Range Rover Evoque (starting ₹44 lakh). The next model that we had so far was Range Rover Sport (starting price ₹93 lakh). Hence the price gap was quite evident. To bridge this gap, we have launched the petrol variant of the all-new Discovery at ₹71.38 lakh and the diesel at around ₹82.77 lakh. The all-new Discovery literally outclasses competition on various capability parameters. For instance, in terms of its off-roading capability, this car has 900mm wading depth ability, where our new Land Rover outclasses the closest competition, perhaps Mercedes GLS, which has a 600mm wading depth.

JLR completes 10 years next year after the Tata takeover, so would the launch of Velar and Discovery be enough? Or would there updates or new variants?

Right now, we are focusing on India. As far as India is concerned we have the all-new Discovery and the soon to be launched Velar. We also have products in the global portfolio and will be looking at those for the Indian market.

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