BMW drives to tier II markets

German luxury car maker BMW plans to ramp up its network across the country by year-end and penetrate into tier II cities, a top company official said.
BMW India president, Mr Peter Kronschnabl, also hoped that with its December sales figures coming out, the company would emerge as the Number one luxury car company in India.
The company had sold 992 cars in the first quarter of 2009. The company has 12 dealers in 10 cities and plans to add 10 more in tier II cities like Coimbatore, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Bhubha-neshwar and Lucknow by the end of 2010. It expects each dealer from Tier II locations to contribute about 30-40 cars a year, he said. BMW’s global component sourcing from India is progressing as per plan, Mr Kronschnabl said.
“We have identified a couple of partners. In the next stage we will be going for sampling and over the next two years we expect our volumes to pick up,” he said.
BMW has already launc-hed four new models this year with three more slated for launch. These include the petrol and diesel variants of its top-end sedan 7 series. BMW India has also established an international purchasing office (IPO) at its headquarters in Gurg-aon. The IPO will focus on development of exports from India to the BMW Group International Prod-uction Network and from there work towards increasing the sourcing share from India over the next few years.
The activities include the identification and assessment of potential suppliers taking into account BMW’s requirements for quality, technology and logistics.
The IPO will explore procurement of production ma-terials (components) as well as IT and engineering services, the company’s website said.

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