Miele piggybacks on luxury housing

“Our speed is shocking Germany,” says Mr Dhananjay Chaturvedi, the tall and strapping Managing Director of luxury appliances company Miele India.

It took the German firm 11 years to move from the East Coast of the US to the West, and 13 years to move from Moscow to St Petersburg, he explains. In India, by contrast, in just one-and-a-half years, Miele has moved from Delhi to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kochi.

“We have dealer touch-points in all these cities and are now planning to go to Surat, Pune, Jaipur, Chennai and Coimbatore,” he says.

The rapid growth for the brand, which retails refrigerators that cost Rs 20 lakh, washing machines that cost around Rs 2.15 lakh, and other high-end products such as wine conditioners and coffee makers, is being helped by the luxury housing development happening in India, he says.

For instance, Tata Housing's premium luxury project in Lonavala, where the likes of cricket maestro Sachin Tendulkar has reportedly booked one of the 72 villas being developed, will be fitted out with Miele appliances. In Gurgaon, M3M Golf Estates, which is developing 1,800 luxury apartments, will have five Miele appliances in each apartment. Similarly, luxury service apartments such as Four Seasons and West Court Realty in Bangalore and “a few in NCR with whom we are in discussions,” all spell good news for luxury brands such as Miele, he says.

The other trend in this segment, according to Mr Chaturvedi, are the collaborations taking place between like-minded luxury brands. “Since our clientele is likely to be a Bang & Olufsen user or a BMW owner, we do cross-promotions with them,” he says.

COMMENT NOW