In India, the super luxury vehicle segment is still in its infancy, but over the past few years we have been witnessing encouraging trends. More and more customers from tier II cities are buying Lamborghinis. A few years ago, it was limited to metros. Also, this trend is widely spread and you can see a Lamborghini in Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jaipur, Indore, Kanpur, Lucknow, Bhubaneshwar, Goa, Kozhikode, Kochi or Coimbatore! Today, these cities contribute about 25 per cent of our business.
A key factor driving sales in these cities is the growth in the aspirations of the target segment there. We see a trend where the new generations from these cities study abroad, manage businesses across continents and experience the lifestyle and luxury abroad. When they come back home, they want to enjoy the same lifestyle and luxury.
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Luxury is all about bespoke experiences and it is reflecting in the consumer demand in India. People do not just buy Lamborghinis; they buy their own Lamborghinis, customised to their personal preferences. We can proudly say that there are no two Lamborghinis alike on the road. In addition to this, we are also witnessing a trend for more exclusive and limited edition cars in India. In 2016, we brought in the limited edition Huracan AVIO. Only 250 of them were made and we have three of them in India. In January 2019, we launched the limited edition Aventador SVJ and the response is very encouraging. Recently we delivered the most exclusive Lamborghini in India, the Aventador SVJ 63 coupe. Only 63 cars have been made. With every limited edition launch we are seeing the excitement growing progressively in the market.
When we launched the Urus, Lamborghini’s first SUV, we anticipated it to be the key driver for our future growth. Today, we see that 70 per cent of Urus buyers are first-timers to Lamborghini, which indicates that these customers always had an aspiration to own and experience a Lamborghini but they never bought one of our super sports cars. In India, there are challenges like infrastructure and traffic conditions. Hence, a super SUV like the Urus is the perfect Lamborghini, as it is practical and an everyday car for most of our customers. Now the Urus contributes about 50 per cent of our business, and we expect that to grow further in the years to come.
India is a strategic market for Lamborghini for its future growth in volume. Our aftersales capabilities are at par with international standards. Over the years we have bought our customer experience platforms to India, which includes Lamborghini track programmes—Accademia and Esperienza—where we bring our fleet of cars and expert race drivers to provide an experience to our customers and prospects in the race track environment, and they can experience the technology and the design leadership of Lamborghini.
Agarwal is operations head of Lamborghini in India.