In a year when most car makers are feeling the pain of the slowdown, German luxury car maker Mercedes Benz India expects to end 2013 with double-digit growth and a significant part of this will come from smaller cities such as Dehradun, Rajkot, Jamshedpur and Lucknow.

At present, around 55 per cent of MBI’s sales come from outside Delhi and Mumbai, and of 10 new dealerships that the company plans to open this year, six will be in the in tier-2 and 3 cities.

With 32 per cent growth year-on-year for the April-June 2013 period, the company has had its best quarterly growth for the last eight quarters. “The newly launched A-Class accounted for 20 per cent of June sales, and the compact car now has a waiting period till August,” Eberhard Kern, Managing Director & CEO, Mercedes Benz India said.

“The growth was 16 per cent in the first six months, and overall we expect double-digit growth this year,” he said, adding that MBI had planned an aggressive product offensive for this year.

Earlier, MBI rolled out the first of the new E-Class cars launched last week from its Chakan plant. Most of the limited edition E-Class cars had been sold out, he said.

Elaborating on the company’s strategy Kern said, “We will continue to follow the strategy of going to the tier-2 and 3 cities,” and added that he expected the share from the smaller cities to continue.

Referring to the depreciation of the rupee, Kern said the company had hedged against the dollar, and would not react with a price rise in the short term. “But if the rupee continues at a weak level, the day will come to partly pass it on to the customer,” he said.

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