With an industry-beating growth in 2025, notching up sales growth of 14% at 18,000 units year on year, German luxury carmaker BMW has been on high gears in the past four years—vrooming at an annual compounded growth rate (CAGR) of 28% since the pandemic or nearly trebling its volumes from 6,604 units in the Covid-hit 2020 to 18,001 units in 2025. Hardeep Singh Brar, President and CEO of BMW India, in an interaction with TNIE’s Benn Kochuveedan tells he is very sanguine about continuing the top-gear drive in the coming future.
After more than a decade, you are now very close to your immediate rival, with the gap being just about 1,000 units. How sure are you about sustaining this hot-run?
We’ve been growing at around 30% CAGR since the pandemic, while the industry growth is much lower. With 18,0001 units, 2025 has been our best-ever, while the industry has been clipping at 4-5% growth, we’d like to continue with the pace. We’ve been getting higher market share every year and we’d like to continue that climb. We grew by about 14% in 2025 and we’d like to grow at 10% plus in 2026 and hopefully in strong double digits from there on.
In terms of market offensive, what’s your launch pipeline for this year?
This year we’ll launch 10 big models. Of them, six are all-new models and the rest will be relaunches with big changes. Besides these 10, we’ll also have 17 minor changes in the existing product portfolio.
How many of them will be local assemblies? And where do you stand in terms of localisation?
As much as 95% of our models are assembled locally and most of the proposed new models will also be assembled locally. But I think these percentages will remain same. In terms of localisation, we are 50%. It’s very difficult to localise more with smaller volume. But we are reviewing it every year, though we have not kept any target for that.
You’ve invested about `12,500 crore since your entry in early 2006. Are you looking at capacity addition?
No need for capacity augmentation as our installed capacity is 50,000 units and we’re producing only about 18,000 units. So we’ve enough capacity.
We’re investing `400 crore in retail as we’re expanding into 10 more cities with 18-20 more outlets, taking our overall footprint to 120 by the end of 2026. But most of the money will come from our dealers. We are in 40 cities now with 100 outlets.
You were No 1 till 2011. With the difference being just about 1,000 units now, when do you see you driving back to the top slot if you maintain the current growth level?
Even in 2024 our gap was about 2,500 units only and now that’s about 1,000. But frankly, we’re not blindly chasing the No 1 slot. We want it to happen organically. We want to do all the right things, and in the process if we become No 1, that’s fine, right? But we aren’t blindly chasing the top slot by offering discounts or something because we want our growth to be organic. We’ll grow step by step, and in the process, we become number one, that’s natural.
But what we want to do is to take the lead in growing the market. I think this is a very important point, because luxury cars form just about 1.1% of the total 4.5 million market.
From a policy perspective, of course, taxation is an issue as it keeps changing. Unlike others, after GST cuts, our EVs grew from about 17% of our volumes to 23% of our total volumes. The whole luxe EV space is about 10% of the 52,000 market now.
But I think a few things are required. For example, if EV penetration is higher in the luxury segment, which is about 10% now, there is a possibility, going by the past precedents, that government may increase tax on luxury EVs. So our request to government is that please don't touch the GST.
So what is your outlook on the EV space? Is that the future of BMW here?
We are quite bullish on EVs, and we’ve already seen it's doing us so well for us the iX1 being the biggest success story for us. The biggest enabler for EVs is the steeply falling battery prices. It used to be $120/kw hour, which has dropped to $100, and is now heading to about $80. So it is slowly and gradually coming down. So once it comes down further, you know, that is good for the industry.
What could be the big pivot for the industry to gain volume? Price parity with ICE models?
Exactly. One of the reasons why EVs are also not doing well is because in some cases, the price gap is as high as 20% between an EV and an ICE. So the price parity is a very critical factor. But we have almost reached the price parity.