Jaguar bets on new XF sedan to grow its market share in India

Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover has effected a facelift of its Jaguar XF to garner a larger piece of the luxury car market in India.

“Jaguar XF has been the mainstay for us. The car has been launched at a very good price. What we are trying to do is to ensure we grow from where we were. We want to expand our reach and want more customers. That has been the primary reason to ensure this car is launched at the right price,” Rohit Suri, President, Jaguar Land Rover India Ltd (JLRIL), told .

On Wednesday, JLR India launched its Jaguar XF sedan in two engine variants -- 2-litre petrol and 2-litre diesel at a price starting ₹49.5 lakh and going up to ₹62.10 lakh for top end diesel and at ₹55.65 lakh and ₹61.85 lakh for the petrol variants.

The car will come as a completely built up unit but will eventually be Made in India.

Suri said the overall growth in the luxury car market has been as per expectations in the last one year.

Despite that, JLR with smaller portfolio of models compared to rivals Audi, Mercedes and BMW has shown significant growth.

With about 3,000 units sold per year, JLR currently commands only about 9 per cent of the luxury car market in India.

Currently present in 23 cities across the country, JLR will enter three more cities by the year-end. “Passenger car market is fairly big in India. Premium car segment is just about 1 per cent in India. There is room for it to grow to 2 per cent because in other mature markets, premium segment is at least 4-5 per cent of the overall passenger car market,” Suri said.

Suri said that apart from Mercedes, JLR was the only company in the segment which has grown in the first quarter of the current calendar year.

“We had a tremendous growth in the first quarter of this calendar year, almost 45 per cent growth,” he said.

Petrol models JLR is also rapidly increasing its petrol models to cash in on the demand for petrol vehicles.

However, Suri said the demand for petrol is not that high at the moment compared to what it would’ve been had Delhi decided to continue the ban on diesel vehicles.

“Currently, about 90 per cent of sales come from diesel vehicles. We expect that to go down to 80 per cent, and therefore, we will be launching petrol variants for every model,” he said.

Although the new Jaguar XF is only a facelift of the previous model, it comes with a smaller 2-litre engine compared with a 2.2 litre and 3 litre engine options in the previous model.

Jaguar said the new Jaguar XF’s lightweight aluminium architecture along with a smaller engine (20 kg lighter) have helped reduce the overall weight up to 190 kg over the previous generation XF.