The world’s auto leader Toyota Motor was reportedly contemplating launching the Lexus brand in India, but then it got stalled. Now, it is said that the Japanese car major is again thinking to launch its luxury brand in India, and this time around more seriously.
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Toyota Motor, which is known as the Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) in India has revived its thoughts to launch the Lexus brand in India, as the market is showing immense potential for expensive luxury car models. Despite the long two year slump in the general car market, there have been high demands for the high-end vehicles. In fact, the volume of growth for the premium vehicle market in India has been in double digit speed for three consistent years now. Thus, the luxury market though still considerably small in India is incredibly potential and is expected to grow by leaps and bounds, now that the general sentiment of the market has improved.
Toyota Motors offers its luxury car brand Lexus for sale in all major car markets of the world, with its demands being the highest in the car market of the US. TKM had all plans to introduce its Lexus brand to the Indian car market back in the year 2012. However, the plan was because of extremely high import excise duty slapped on the luxury vehicles by the Indian government. The plan was rather shelved because of the sluggish local car market and low sales rates for the Toyota cars in India.
Similar to the global luxury car market, the Indian luxury car segment is also ruled by the German luxury auto major trio, namely BMW, Audi and Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz. The luxury car sales in India have witnessed amazing growth in the last three year’s time with sales figures in the market being almost doubled between the year 2010 and 2014.
The reason behind the rise of the luxury car market in India is primarily the expansion of the so called elite class. More Indians have high income rates now, and this has resulted in the improvement of their lifestyles and thus, the rise in demands for the high-end cars in the domestic car market of India. The overall improvement of the Indian economy and the fast development of the Indian car market is also highly responsible for this high demands for the luxury cars. Moreover, the Indian car market has become highly matured now. It has come a long way from a market for only the cheap, small, fuel efficient cars to the more stylish, feature-rich, bigger cars with exclusive appeal. In this hunt for exclusivity, the rich Indians are thus not hesitating in investing in luxury cars.
Toyota is expecting the growth in the Indian luxury market to remain strong and is now looking to take a slice of it. The managing director of TKM, Naomi Ishii said that the luxury segment is a really prized segment and the company needs to go for it.
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I am into the auto blogs field for quite a long time. Living my passion of reviewing cars.
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