Mercedes Benz India Limited (MBIL) is aiming to increase its used car business by 50 per cent through the launch of a direct customer-to-customer selling platform called Marketplace.

At present, its used car business comprises 20 per cent of its new car sales. With the online platform, the German luxury brand hopes its used car business will be 30 percent of its new car sales.

The company which hopes to achieve its 2019 new car sales of 13,786 units by the end of this year has already registered a 65 per cent growth on its 2020 new car sales of 7,893 units in H1 2021.

Consequently, the company is hoping to post a used car sales of over 4,000 units after the launch of the Marketplace.

Commenting on the launch, MBIL CEO Martin Schwenk said: “There are two ways in which used cars sell in the market. About 20 percent of the customers trade in with the dealer while 80 per cent shop around. The used car business is largely unstructured. With the Marketplace we are trying to do it in a structured way. The Marketplace will enable direct sales between customer to customer, better transparency, support from dealers, greater inventory.”

While stressing that Mercedes Benz India has no direct stake in the used car transactions but “with every sale of a used car, there will be more customers buying a new car”.

When asked if the pandemic has impacted the second hand market, Schwenk said: “For us there has been no significant impact. Activities are now at a pre-Covid level, the market is relatively stable and we are witnessing an increase in demand for used cars.”

The CEO said, “The last few weeks after the second wave, the market is back to pre-Covid levels”.

Replying to a question if customers were hanging on to their old cars in the face of economic uncertainty, Schwenk said: “We have not experienced that. We are cautiously optimistic and we hope 2021 will have a graceful end.”

The company is also transforming the way it retails new cars. It will directly sell its vehicles to customers with its dealerships facilitating the process with brand experience, displays in the showrooms, sales consultations and test drives.