subject: The Great Indian Used Car Bazaar [print this page] Indians are buying lots of cars, exclaimed Barack Obama. The statement is indeed true as the recovering Indian economy and rising income levels are leading to an increase in the demand of cars. The rising Indian middle class is aspiring for own cars, which is leading to a rise in the used car segment.
This trend is leading to a lot of OEMs entering the Indian used car market. The future of this currently unorganised sector looks better organised. As the recent trend suggests even the luxury car makers like BMW are entering the pre-owned markets and other existing players are in the expansion mode.
Currently, the Indian market has several OEM owned pre-owned car outlets like Maruti Maruti Truevalue, Honda Siel Cars Honda Auto Terrace, Fords Ford Assured, Toyota Kirloskar Motors Toyota U Trust, Hyundai Motors Hyundai Advantage and Mahindra and Mahindras First Choice. Among the luxury brands BMW opened its first pre-owned car outlet in Gurgaon recently and Porsche and Bentley are expected to follow suit. This upsurge in pre owned car market is expected to take the number of outlets to almost 270.
Tier I and Tier II cities get as many as 25,000 queries of which about 40 per cent are converted. Most of the used car buyers like to research their cars on the web and then decide. This increase in demand would be maintained by factors like more and more OEMs entering pre-owned automobile industry, lifestyle needs, recovering economy, more upwardly mobile population and easy availability of car loans.
A used Tata Nano, the fabled Rs. 1 Lakh car, is expected by next year. The price of a used Nano is going to be very attractive and further the growth of this segment. But a major disappointing factor of this segment is that it is almost unorganised. But the uncertified cars are usually a big risk since one can never be sure of the car parts. However, this is set to change in time as more and more OEMs enter this segment.
