No business house can drop Mumbai from the list if wished to make Big in this country of dreams and cut-throat retail. Volvo with no exception from Sweden had accepted this lately, and finally brought the financial capital of India a new showroom in the swanky suburbs. The new showroom of Volvo saw inauguration last week is located at Link Road, Andheri West, named KIFS Motor. With a sales floor measuring more than 2,000 sq-ft, Volvo India has touched the head of swanky retail therapy, but still the models lack perception of luxurious movers against the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW, where those Germans offers competitive pricing due to their manufacturing facilities in India, and Volvo staying exception to them by retailing at competitively higher prices for the reason of importing cars as CBUs (completely built units) attracting higher import duties.
Looking down to Volvo’s strategic note, the carmaker believes importing cars in India is beneficiary than producing them locally. The reason, setting up a manufacturing facility costs a whopping amount of money on the part of automakers, where to recover them takes years, which doesn’t allow the makers to reduce prices by a wide margin for staying on the path of fast recovery.
Commenting at the inauguration, Mr. Thomas Ernberg, Managing Director at Volvo India said Volvo to have found great acceptance in India during the past 2-3 years. To gain a strong foothold and surge ahead on this lucrative feasibility of the market, Mumbai as a business capital posed soft-target to hit the nail right on its head. After all, 20% of the luxury car sales from India come from the city of Mumbai itself.
At present, five models are found on the sales floor of Volvo in India. The range starts with V40 Cross Country, S60 and S80 sedan, and SUV lineup consists of XC60 and XC90. The latest edition of flagship XC90 unveiled in international markets will also arrive in India by September 2015.