The pre-owned car market is seeing tremendous growth in India, in the post-Covid era. There is an increasing demand for personal mobility, and it is not just limited to mass-market cars, but luxury vehicles as well. In fact, Luxury Ride, the Haryana-based multi-branded pre-owned luxury car seller, saw 45 per cent growth in Financial Year 2021-22, compared to a year ago. Sumit Garg, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Luxury ride told carandbike, "Though the market for the past couple of years has been disruptive, still we were able to clock a growth of 45 per cent annually." The company which began operations in 2015 has so far sold over 1500 units and serviced around more than 14,000 pre-owned luxury cars.
Also Read: Used Luxury Car Sales Seeing Growth As Buyers Looking For Upgrades
Garg says that since Luxury Ride's inception in 2015, it has been a roller coaster ride for the company. It has time and again been affected by things like demonetisation, inventory shortage, Covid-19 and every time, Luxury Ride has managed to come up again with strong growth. "After COVID, we grew at a very good pace because the demand has gone up. When we started in 2015, and where we are sitting in 2022, we have seen immense change in customer behaviour toward pre-owned cars," he added.
Sumit Garg, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Luxury ride India's used car industry still plenty of room for growth.
While the level of growth is certainly impressive, Garg doesn't want to stop there. Stating that right now India's used car market is quite small and there is still plenty of room for growth, he said, "In the US and China and many big countries, the ratio of new car vs pre-owned car is 1:4 or 1:3, in India however, it's not even 1:1.5 properly... but yes, it will grow with time. Already the culture is there, demand is there, supply issue is there and that's why the demand is more and yes, the pre-owned car industry is getting benefitted."
While the company is working on building a strong inventory of pre-owned luxury cars, right now, it is also focusing on expanding its retail network. Back in 2020, Luxury Ride announced its plan to expand its network pan India with 50 new showrooms by 2023. We asked Garg whether COVID has affected the company expansion plan in any way, to which he replied, "No, there are no changes in the plans, we are still targeting for 50 showrooms by 2023." He did not mention which cities will they be targeting, however, according to the company's 2020 statement, the plan included cities like - Hyderabad, Bangalore, Indore, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Kolkata, and Pune.
Luxury Ride is working on building a strong inventory of pre-owned luxury cars along with network expansion.
Talking about the company's existing network Garg said, "We are available in five cities, Delhi, Gurugram, Karnal, Dehradun and Jaipur. So, Dehradun has a showroom plus a service centre, Karnal has a showroom plus a service centre, Delhi only has a service centre, Gurugram only has a showroom, and Jaipur has a showroom and a service centre both. So basically, four showrooms and four service centres present in five cities."
