Eberhard Kern took over as Mercedes-Benz India head in December 2012, when the German company was trailing BMW and Audi in the country’s luxury-car market. As it now drives back to the top position, Kern tells Chanchal Pal Chauhan about the key initiatives that helped the brand outpace the rivals. Edited excerpts: Almost three years of a massive new product onslaught brought you back to grabbing most luxury-car customers, which seemed almost impossible. The journey has been great. The three years went by just like that. It was exciting time. Business is doing well — July was good and September is festive month. We clocked impressive sales of 6,659 units in the January-June 2015 period, 41% more than in the first half of 2014. What were your internal targets when you joined? The global target is to be No. 1 latest by 2020. To get there you have to be leading in all the segments in all the regions. This is how we approached the business. There was a clear target to increase our relative performance to take the business forward. It is not always about sales numbers; as important are sustainability, profitability, customer satisfaction and brand equity. Did the success of SUVs tone up your India strategy? From a pure sedan approach, we came to SUVs and now compact luxury cars like A and B Class with, as the fourth pillar, the performance cars – something like the Mercedes-AMG C 63 S as the latest member of that family. AMG C 63 S is the 10th AMG model to be launched in India – the highest in the performance segment for any luxury car brand, besides the other product offensive. We launched more than 25 products and close to 30 dealerships in the past few years. The foundation put in 20 years ago has developed further and I believe the brand of Mercedes is very strong in India. The new design philosophy has gained much acceptance in the Indian market and proved to be an effective answer to BMW… The new design, of course, helped a lot in engaging younger customers, who are now more interested in luxury cars (but) who a few years back probably didn’t think so much about Mercedes. Today, with this very stylish and design-oriented and sporty-design language, these young guys are attracted to the brand. We see this with so many new customers hooked on to especially the C-A- CLA and GLA-Class models. It has proved that car design in the luxury car business is of utmost importance. This helped a lot to take the business forward. What is the future course of action for Mercedes? If I see our future planning and the portfolio that is lined up, we have a strong team in India with a massive network along with the largest luxury customer base in India, of over 70,000. We are future-ready with future investment already done at the Pune factory taking our total money to around Rs 1,000 crore. Besides, the professional set up of our financial services in India would abet the need of our customers and dealers who have almost invested Rs 700 crore in their businesses. How do you see the luxury-car business in India? The luxury-car market in India is very much a diesel business, for majority sales are for diesel variants. For Mercedes, the diesel share is around 85% that is distinct for us as we have the sports car portfolio of the AMG cars that are all petrol. If you look at the SUVs, we offer – besides the AMG – only diesel in our models. The share of diesel is very high even in limousines and the sedans. So, we plan to keep the engine portfolio very much targeted to the demand in the market. Though we try to give choices to the customer for either – diesel or petrol – but going by the demand graph, it seems diesel would lead the Indian market in near future.