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Mercedes Benz India inaugurated its expanded production facility at the Chakan plant, coinciding with the roll out of the first made-in-India GLA. The compact SUV was introduced in the Indian market as a fully built unit in September 2014.
The expansion has enabled the German luxury car maker to double its capacity from the existing 10,000 units to 20,000 units per annum. This takes the total investment by the car major in India to over ₹1,000 crore.
Equipped with flexible lines, the Chakan plant is the first and only one in the Mercedes world globally to have the capacity to make all three — sedans, SUVs as well as the New Generation Cars — the A and B-Class hatchbacks, the GLA SUV and the CLA sedan — on the same platform.
Contrary to an earlier plan to kick-off the production of New Generation cars in India with the CLA sedan, the diesel variant of the GLA has become the first to be locally assembled. The kits will be imported from Germany and with local content of around 60 per cent, the move has led to a reduction of ₹1.5-2.5 lakh across its two models, on the GLA’s ex-showroom price. It will now range from ₹31.31 lakh for the Style model and ₹34.25 lakh for the Sport model.
“The plan was to start local assembly of NGCs (A, B, GLA, CLA) with the CLA, but we decided to pre-pone the localisation of the GLA because of the high demand it faces,” Eberhard Kern, MD and CEO, Mercedes Benz India, explained.
The car currently has a waiting period of around two months. The company had expected the initial demand for the SUVs to wane over a period, but had pre-orders like never before, he added. The GLA is now the best-selling model of the NGCs, accounting for 40 per cent of its sales. The NGCs account for a little over 30 per cent of total MBI’s sales.
This year, Mercedes Benz grew by 40 per cent in the first quarter of calendar 2015 with sales of 3,566 units. “During April and May the growth has been higher than 40 per cent,” Kern said, adding that the company will see good growth in the whole year.
Last year, the Indian luxury car market grew 1.3 per cent to 33,000 units. Kern expects the number to touch 40,000 units this year.
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