Daimler India to set up 350 new dealerships across India

A subsidiary of the Stuggart-headquartered company, Daimler India has claimed that it plans to have at least 350 dealerships across India. The company plans to implement this strategy in the next two years. Daimler is looking to penetrate deeper into the Indian market with this move.

The company will also look to enhance the digitalisation process including the sales experience. The Chennai-based company also plans to add more value-added offerings to customers going forward.

The company currently uses it manufacturing facility in Orgadama, near Chennai to produce 9 to 55 tonne trucks as well as BharatBenz buses, Mercedes-Benz coaches and bus chassis.

In an interview to PTI Daimler India Commercial Vehicle (DICV) Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Satyakam Arya said, "We are the only commercial vehicles maker in the country which is expanding the dealership network. Last year we ended at 230 touchpoints and this year our target is to have more 250 touchpoints by the end of this month. Our final picture is to have minimum 350 dealerships by 2022."

Further, he claimed that that the network expansion is part of the announcement made last year and it is going to be a focus area for the company in the next two years.

The company claimed to have setup 10 touchpoints in a single day last month. This helped Daimler India increase its servicing capacity by 13,000 vehicles a year. Also, together the new facilities will add around 300,000 sq ft of workshop space including more than 40 mechanical bays. With this, dealer network will now be able to service over 40,000 vehicles a month.

"We have been the front runner is terms of digitalisation and connectivity in the market. We are very bullish on digitalisation, and connectivity is an enabler for more value-added services to the customers. We are going to add more and more offerings to our customers in the next two years as we move forward," Arya said.

According to him, the Covid-19 pandemic has expedited the digitisation process by 10 years.

Arya claimed that in the last 5-6 months, the automobile industry has started to recover very well, but the picture varies from segment to segment.

"At BharatBenz, we have done phenomenally well, especially post BS-VI launch. The MHCV (medium and heavy commercial vehicle) industry is lower by 60 per cent but we are lower by only 26 per cent, which means we have done much better. We have been growing year-on-year since August more than double digit and have in fact, more than doubled our volumes in October compared to last year. we are doing phenomenally well in spite of such a market," he said.

On the industry performance, he said that while the passenger car segment has seen double digit growth on account of pent-up demand due to personal mobility, a trend which was also reflecting in the two-wheelers segment, adding that the tractor segment is also doing phenomenally well due to the agriculture sector doing well.

With inputs from PTI