Mercedes Benz India has launched an e-commerce platform that will have new cars, old certified cars and collection items for online booking.

“Ordering a car online will be as easy as ordering food online,” Martin Schwenk, managing director of Mercedes Benz India, said while launching the digital initiatives at Chakan in Pune on Tuesday.

“We aim to get 25 per cent of our sales online by 2025,” said the MD, who is battling an 18 per cent drop in sales this year.

The German luxury player has had to postpone launches because of the depressed market conditions. Schwenk said there was instability in the market “caused by too many things happening at the same time” such as BS-VI transition and electric vehicles. He said the worst for the industry was over and a turnaround was round the corner.

The company will start its launches with the diesel version of G-Class next week.

Elaborating on its digital drive, Scheenk said, “Mercedes has tied up with Roadster Inc, a US based e-commerce platform for bringing in online sales solutions for Mercedes-Benz cars in India.”

The Mercedes-Benz India certified pre-owned cars and collection items are available immediately from October 1, 2019. These cars are the ones used by Merc executives. Certified old cars by dealers will be available from December, while new cars by dealers will be for sale from January 2020. The new e-commerce portal is www.shop.mercedes-benz.co.in.

Schwenk said there were plans to bring virtual reality, augmented reality and machine learning features into its services. He also stressed on data privacy. “Mercedes Benz India is on its way to being EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant much before Indian data protection legislation.”