Zerodha founder and CEO Nithin Kamath strongly disagreed with the recent remarks of Santosh Iyer, sales & marketing head of Mercedes-Benz India, that the saving mindset of Indians was the biggest challenge to the growth of the luxury car industry in the country.
According to Kamath, it is in fact this saving mindset that would help people in times of crisis.
“A saving mindset is what will help us in times like now when countries that have borrowed heavily are getting screwed? In a world of rising interest rates, this will probably get much worse before it gets better for them,” Kamath said in a tweet tagging the screenshot of Iyer’s recent interview.
He added that slow but steady growth is much better than debt-fuelled explosive growth where people borrow money to buy depreciating assets. This was neither good for the customers nor the businesses in the long run.
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In the same tweet, Kamath said he hoped that Iyer was merely ‘misquoted’ and that it was not what the soon-to-be MD and CEO of Mercedes-Benz India said.
In an exclusive interview with The Times of India, Santosh Iyer, who is set to take charge as MD and CEO of Mercedes Benz India from January 2023, said Indians were in double minds when it came to buying luxury goods such as high-end cars. He said while his own car brand received inquiries from 15,000 people each month, it only received 1,500 car orders.
Iyer said systematic investment plans (SIPs) were the biggest challenger to the luxe car manufacturing brand.
Reacting to Kamath’s tweet, one user said all luxury carmakers including Mercedes were having a good year and were likely to improve further.,
Another user One Life (@onlinelife_) said that if a person was looking at breaking a SIP/FD investment to buy a Mercedes car, then that person cannot afford the car yet.
Rohit Andley (@rohitandley) thanked financial influencers for creating awareness that cars were a depreciating asset.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
First Published: Nov 28, 2022 4:51 PM IST
