Daimler sees its Indian sales up 20 percent in 2008

Daimler AG sees its Indian sales rising 20 percent to around 3,000 cars in 2008 on sustained demand for its luxury Mercedes-Benz cars, the chief executive of its Indian unit said on Thursday.

"In India we have 120,000 dollar millionaires roughly. These are definitely our potential customers," said Wilfried Aulbur, chief executive of Daimler's Indian unit.

Mercedes sold 2,487 cars in the first eight months of 2008, compared with 2,491 cars for all of 2007, he said.

Mercedes has a capacity to roll out 5,000 cars in India now and could quickly double it, he said. It assembles the C, E and S class cars in India.

The luxury car market in India is dominated by Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Annual sales of less than 10,000 are miniscule given India's population of 1.1 billion, but are growing rapidly.

Last year the market grew 60 percent and this year it is on course to do double that rate due to new entrants in the luxury segment, Aulbur said.

"If you compare with other emerging countries there is significantly more potential in terms of volume here," he said.