Porsche to launch pre-owned car programme in India

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Mumbai, Nov 3: German sports carmaker, Porsche AG plans to launch its pre-owned car programme in India next year in a bid to further boost its business in the country. "We are looking at launching Porsche pre-owned car programme in India next year," said Rod Wallace, managing director, Porsche India. He added that this would fuel the brand's equity in the country as well as customer base.

"This will attract more potential customers who till now looked at Porsche cars little less affordable," he said. The company runs similar programme globally. The cars will be refurbished by the dealer and also enjoy company warranty.

Says Pinaki Mukherjee, a lead analyst and Manish Khurana, an automotive analyst, Datamonitor India, "A customer looking at buying a luxury car does not want to take a chance as the brand is important. Hence, even if he is looking at buying a pre-owned luxury car, he will prefer doing it from the company's authorised dealer."

They further added that the luxury carmakers also did not want the brand value to go down and involve in running such pre-owned programmes. Consider this: In a classic case, Rolls Royce went ahead to buy back its car from an owner after the former found out that the owner was not keeping the car in a good condition. Rolls Royce runs a pre-owned car programme called Rolls Royce Provenance and sold through the Rolls Royce Motor Cars dealers.

Even BMW runs a pre-owned car programme globally called the BMW Premium Selection programme. Indicating that the Indian used car market is as big as the new car market, analysts from Datamonitor, said, "These car makers are trying to penetrate the already huge and buoyant used car market to complement their new car sales, which is seeing tremendous growth." Sales figures of some of the luxury carmakers in India highlight on it. For instance, Porsche sold 101 cars last year in India and targets to sell 200 cars this year. The company's cars are base priced in the range of Rs 52 lakh to Rs 1.25 crore in India. Mercedes-Benz sold 2,500 cars last year and has already crossed that figure with sales of 3,141 cars till now this year. Mercedes Benz has a semi-formal level arrangement as far as sale of pre-owned cars is concerned wherein its dealers look into the sale of the cars.