Jaguar Land Rover Looking To Grow Its Dealership Network

Now it might look like a big number for a luxury car maker, but when compared to rival manufacturers such as Audi India, BMW India, and Mercedes-Benz India, it lags far behind. Here is a table, which lists out the number of dealerships each luxury car manufacturer has in India.

Clearly, the big three (Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi) are far ahead in terms of number of dealerships and reach. These three manufacturers have also penetrated into tier II cities and satellite cities such as Jalandhar, Ghaziabad, Mohali, Vadodara, Nashik and so on, which gives them the sales volumes. For example, Jaguar Land Rover does not have a presence in the state of Goa, while the big three do. Jeep started off its India operations in August 2016 with just two dealerships and has already reached 5 before the year ended. They will be opening up 5 more in the coming months.

India is a big country and there is a lot of potential locked up in the smaller cities. JLR India would need to reach out and tap into these cities in order to sell more vehicles. Another example of reaching out to smaller cities is Audi's Mobile Terminal facility, which is a moving showroom on wheels and offers all the services of a fully functional luxury car dealership. The Audi Mobile Terminal programme started off in 2015 and had over 1,200 visitors that year. Also, it visited towns such as Siliguri, Patna, Jamshedpur and so on and increased their brand presence and awareness.

(New Jaguar Land Rover Dealership inaugurated in Noida)

With respect to JLR India's strategy for 2017, here's what Rohit Suri, President & Managing Director, Jaguar Land Rover India, had to say, "Because our cars are becoming very popular and customers, for the last 5-6 years have really liked the brand, as it is fairly strongly established, we have close to 4.7 million fans on Facebook, for Jaguar alone, which truly outstrips any other brand within the premium segment. Therefore, our effort, our strategy would be to focus on making the cars accessible to more and more people across India."

He also added saying that at present, Jaguar and Land Rover is performing at par, with more or less equal demand from both these brands. JLR will be adding at least one more new dealership in India before the end of 2017. As far as upcoming Jaguar Land Rover cars is concerned, Rohit Suri was mum about the exact number but did says there will be more than one launch in India over the course of the year. One of the sure-shot model launch will be the new Land Rover Discovery. The AWD Jaguar F-Type might also make its debut in India and will get few updates as well. Also, the new generation Land Rover Defender might make its global debut. Although it remains to be seen whether it will make it to India this year itself or not.

Now let us take a quick look at the sales figures for luxury car manufacturers in India for 2016.

Although Audi and JLR haven't released their sales figures yet, but we can say that Audi ranks number two behind Mercedes-Benz for the overall sales figures in 2016.