The all-new BMW X3 was launched recently at Bird Automotive’s new facility in Gurugram, making it BMW’s ninth dealership in Delhi NCR region and 45th in the country. Now available at all of BMW's dealerships in the diesel variant, the BMW X3’s petrol variant is on its way.
For those looking for a Sports Activity Vehicle that is well-designed as well as luxurious, the BMW X3 should definitely please them, especially if they are seeking to enjoy it both on and off road. With extremely competitive prices starting at INR 49,99,000 for the Expedition scheme and INR 56,70,000 for the Luxury Line scheme, BMW has yet again managed to wow potential customers while taking another step towards bringing the ‘Joy’ of driving into their lives.
Excerpts from an interview with Vikram Pahwa, President, BMW Group India
Who is the target customer for the BMW X3?
The BMW X3 is not targeted at a specific profile. It’s a very wide profile and we’re looking at what we call the upwardly mobile customer who are looking at the toughness of a Sports Activity Vehicle but the driving dynamics of a sports car as well. People can take this car to their office if they want to or they can take it off road on the weekends or on a long trip with their family as well. That is the kind of customer we’re looking at. That customer exists both in the corporate world, in small and medium enterprises and even young professionals or traditional businessmen. So, we see that customer everywhere right now.
The BMW X3 as such is a very spacious car, which in India is very important, and it has the right mix of orientation towards the driver as well as the back. So, if you look at driving―the touchscreen features or the digital key or the parts―all these things are totally luxury features for a driver along with the performance which we are known for. At the same time in the rear, you have a lot of spacious interiors, you have backseat recline functions, panoramic sunroof etc. Overall, it gives you a luxurious lounge feeling, when you sit in the back as well. That’s why we’re looking around at a person who wants to be driven around on weekdays and weekends, they want to take their families and drive themselves. That’s what we’re looking for.
The all-new BMW X3 is completely made at your Chennai plant. Tell us about it.
We established our plant in Chennai in 2007 when we entered India and since then we’ve been localising more and more products. Currently, all my volume selling products are produced in the plant in Chennai. We have localisation of up to 50 per cent on all these models. There are some models which are niche models such as the M, which are performance cars, or X6 that we import. But the rest, I’d say 98-99 per cent of our sales happen through our locally produced parts. We are pretty committed in India having created the capacities 10-11 years ago.
We believe in the story of India. We believe that India will grow, be a fantastic market. We believe that until and unless you produce it here, you cannot provide the value that you can provide to your customer. That’s why you will see the pricing that we launched the BMW X3 at INR 49,90,000, fantastic price for our customer to come in and buy a mid-sized SUV. So, that’s the kind of value we want to deliver. We will continue to deliver and utilise our plant more and more.
Why opt for BMW when increasingly newer players are entering our market?
For us, it is clear… the basic fundamental of our product, of our brand is ‘Joy.’ We’re a very dynamic brand. We’re not a static brand. We believe in dynamism. So, when you see our product design, when you see our events, you see everything to be very, very dynamic and we believe in India―joy and dynamism is part of our culture as well. If you look at Indian culture, it's all about joy and being dynamic. We’re a young society. We enjoy ourselves, and we want to express our joy. We want to be dynamic and show the world that we’re leaders, and I think those two things match very well from an Indian culture point of view and a brand culture point of view. That's where I feel the connection and passion with the customer is fantastic.
I meet so many customers during events, during so many drives, and the kind of passion that they have for our product, they can immediately connect to. Yes, you may have other options, no doubt about it, which is good. People have options, but whoever attaches to BMW is totally passionate about it and wants to display that passion to the rest of the world, which is all about India, I would say.
Tell us about the dealerships that you have across India and how you plan to enhance the customer experience, because so much is also about the after-sales experience…
The after-sales is the most important thing. For us, it’s the lifetime relationship with our customer what we believe in and gives us joy at every stage. To give you some facts about the dealership, we have 45 sales outlets. We intend to expand it in a very viable fashion and get up to 50 by the end of 2018. What we are also doing is reaching out to more cities through our mobile studios. We have a BMW mobile studio which is basically a “showroom on wheels.” We cover about 50 (emerging) towns in a year.
In addition to that, every town will have a service facility. Servicing is an integral part of our business. In these towns that we go to with our mobile studios, we also go for ‘service camps.’ We service regularly because if we’re selling cars then we have to make sure that people don’t have to travel and we’re able to do the basic servicing there. If anything major is required then we bring it to the mothership town.
In terms of value and how we’re delivering to our customers, we have huge packages that people can buy, be it service packages, repair packages, insurance packages―anything that can take care of their requirements. We have a lifestyle collection or accessories that people can really extend their brand experience with. People buy t-shirts, caps, because they want to express their brand ethos. Also, we’re doing lots of events for our customers. It's more engaging for people who can do many more activities than just look at cars. There’s more fun happening in that area, lot of entertainment. We’re associated with art, with culinary series. We basically keep on delivering more and more value to our customer. It’s not about just selling the cars. We display the passion in everything we do and you’ll see that we’ll start introducing Virtual Reality Concepts into our showroom as well and this showroom will be one of the first ones to have it as well.