[asit.kulkarni93]

As we have entered the unlock down phase, things are getting back to normal but there are some changes around. The last 3 months have drained a lot of businesses and a few have shut shop.

This brings me to the automobile industry. I am sure it will be very difficult for a lot of showrooms to operate considering the salaries, rent.etc. We will have a lot of showrooms shutting down.

I did a part of my schooling in the Kingdom Of Bahrain and back in 2007, a new mall was the talk of the town. Kuwait Finance House had opened a car mall where you could check out multiple cars under one roof and get easy finance options. I haven’t been able to keep a track of how successful it was but it seemed like a good deal considering the low sales of regular euro brands in the Middle East. In fact, there are dealers like Euro motors who have one showroom for BMW, Mini, Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Maserati, Jaguar and Land Rover. This has worked well for them. I am sure this concept has worked well in a lot of other countries too.

Kuwait Finance House Car Mall



Euro Motors showroom in Bahrain

Dealers in India should consider doing this.

Advantages of a Car Mall-
1. Overheads will be much lesser for brands who have fewer cars on sale in India(like Jeep, Nissan.etc.)
2. A common service centre with dedicated service bays and individual spare parts section will make servicing easy too.
3. Having all brands under one roof may help boost sales of an underrated product(Figo vs swift)

Disadvantages-

1. It will be of no help to customers who have a pre-decided car, might help them consider other cars but there are people who have swift, Creta, crysta.etc. Pre-decided.

2. Instead of having one small showroom and service centre, a bigger real property will be required. Might get difficult in cities like Mumbai.

3. Dealers might push for vehicles where they have higher margins.

All said and done, it’s a concept if executed well can do wonders. Your thoughts?

[GTO]

Fat chance we'll ever see multi-brand dealers in India. It's like a Maruti dealer going to their HQ and asking "can I sell Hyundai cars on the same / next door premises?". The manufacturers will never allow it, for the simple reason that they have gotten away with "single brand" showrooms all these years. The OEMs would hate to fix something that isn't broken, especially if they don't stand to benefit from the change.

The big brands have enough businessmen ready to open their standalone showrooms. Smaller manufacturers however, might now be open to such collaborations because they simply don't have the sales to support a strong dealer network. I definitely see this happening with the likes of Nissan, Jeep, even VW etc. You'd have to be really desperate (remember how Fiat agreed to sell cars in Tata showrooms).

Today, if a dealer of brand A wants to open a dealership for brand B, he has to jump through a lot of hoops. If B isn't a direct competitor to A, and the dealer commits that A's dealership will not suffer from lack of attention or financing, it might happen.

The closest we'll come to a car mall is:

- An area full of car dealerships. Think of the Prabhadevi one-way road (Appasaheb Marathe Marg) where we have lots of dealers clustered together.

- Or a developer with deep pockets (like Phoenix Mills) opens up a "car complex" and invites all the brands.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by GTO

- Or a developer with deep pockets (like Phoenix Mills) opens up a "car complex" and invites all the brands.

One such example from Bangalore. The below complex belongs to VST group and houses Volkswagen, Mahindra and Kia (Ford earlier) under one roof - but as three separate entities.



VST should have deep pockets. They also have Ducati dealerships for both Chennai and Bangalore - along with Mercedes and Jaguar Land Rover dealerships in Chennai.

I find this particular dealership very comfortable to walk into - because of ample parking space (shared with three brands) and the sheer ease of just walking from one brand to the second next door - when I was checking out the XUV 3OO v/s Ecosport, for example.

[jetsetgo08]

I am not aware of competition laws if there are any and not sure if this would apply to automobiles in India.

But as per my observation this strategy does very well apply to the 'khau gullies'(eat streets). There would be some who outdo the rest but almost every vendor ends up doing minimal business at the end of the day.

[Jeroen]

I don’t think I have come across “car malls” during all my travels.

What you will come across, in many countries, is “car boulevards”. So along the same street you will find multiple car dealers all conveniently strung out along the same stretch of road.

Along the same stretch you are likely to find car wash, car parts, tyre shops, detailing shops etc. These days car boulevards tends to situated outside the main town centres. Usually on the business estates where you will also find the huge supermarkets, DIY stores, Ikea and such.

Although I have not exactly kept count, I do get the impression that the high end brands (E.g. BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Jaguar, Porsche) typically flock together and so do all the remaining ones.

When it comes to very exclusive cars, e.g. RR, Ferrari, Lambo etc. I think they have their own ideas about where to set up showrooms. Of course Tesla, was very much the first who took their showrooms into not just city centres, but usually prime shopping locations/streets where nobody has seen a car dealership before.

So the approach does very a bit. Dealer showrooms are incredibly expensive to run and operate, so they need to be in place where you attract maximum attention for your type of customer. The last thing you want is to attract folks who are interested in cars, but are not buying. It is of course one of the reasons to the demise of the car show. Car manufacturers want to get the best return of investment. It is not about what is the most cost effective way to display my cars, but what is the most effective way of displaying my cars.

Just pooling a bunch of different brands together might not work for all.

Everybody is very “brand conscious” these days. In the sense, you don’t want a Skoda and a VW joint showroom anymore.

Jeroen

[moralfibre]

Opening a single dealership in itself is a huge capital expense. The dealer has to comply to 100s of norms laid out by the manufacturer. Each of them have their own standards to comply with as well. Considering that running a car dealership business itself is a secondary or even tertiary pivot to many dealers, I doubt they keep aside large amounts of investment to grow this.

What we will see for sure is auto hubs like - link (Worli : the new auto-hub of Mumbai)

As real estate prices sky rocket in the city limits, only those in the real estate business are able to sustain and run operations on owned spaces for car dealerships. Citing Pune's example, Jay-Vijay motors, Sai Service, BU Bhandari, etc are the handful lot who haven't completely moved base over to Pune's thriving auto hub at Pune Bangalore bypass.

Offtopic: As you exit the expressway towards Pune, you could pretty much test drive EVERY single brand of car out there barring BMW. And this happens in a stretch of 20-25 kms. The proximity to the highway also offers one a chance to test drive the vehicle better compared to driving through thick traffic within city limits.

Looking at the US market, I don't think I've seen auto mall that hosts all dealers in one complex but there are several "Automall parkways". These are long running streets full of car dealerships owned by different individuals but in a convenient spot. Stevens creek blvd is one such in the Bay area that has stood around for the longest time.

[blackwasp]

Originally Posted by asit.kulkarni93

Advantages of a Car Mall-
1. Overheads will be much lesser for brands who have fewer cars on sale in India(like Jeep, Nissan.etc.)
2. A common service centre with dedicated service bays and individual spare parts section will make servicing easy too.
3. Having all brands under one roof may help boost sales of an underrated product(Figo vs swift)

I have always been a strong advocate of such an arrangement. Apart from the showroom space savings, the dealers will have a much better capacity utilisation of the service bays as well.

However, given the technical knowledge of the majority of the salespersons and the maturity levels of the Indian buyer, it doesn't seem like a good idea. But there are always ways around this - separate showrooms / partitioned areas for each manufacturer with dedicated teams along with a common backend system and service point could make financial sense as well.

[motorworks]

Post COVID no big investments are going to be made for a point of sale. The dealers wouldnt do it and auto manufacturers wouldnt come together for such an arrangement as well since the financials would be complex.

Rather, the trend seems to be smaller dealerships with lower overheads. If you see some of the new showrooms of Skoda or even Ford, the show rooms size is really small, with just 1-2 cars on display. I have in fact visited a Hyundai showroom in Bangalore which was really small and they only had about 3-4 cars.
And likewise newer and niche players like Citroen are taking this approach of smaller showrooms which do not put a huge burden on the dealer.

At best we may see same group brands in a showroom like VW, Skoda or even Renault Nissan, but that would surely dilute brand identity for these brands who are still finding their feet in the country.

The future is all about being nimble footed and agile, and I think car showrooms will reflect this thought process.

[Samba]

There is an auto mall mostly conquered by Lexus Motors Group at Rajarhat in Kolkata.
Under one premise their are multiple showrooms of different car brands on different floors in adjacent buildings.

This is the link of the entire setup-
http://www.automallkolkata.com/

Hyundai, Tata, Jaguar, LandRover, Volvo, Renault are currently operational over here. Plus within a walking distance their is Isuzu & Honda too. Mostly a Maruti Suzuki showroom is on the way to open soon.

Pic courtesy - Google.

[landcruiser123]

Buying a car is still an aspiration for many in India. Manufacturers and dealerships work together to (mostly) provide a white-glove experience to buyers.

Compare multi brand selling of mass market clothing or electronics. You can buy a Lee, Wrangler or Levi's jeans from most stores.

[ACM]

Thane Ghodbunder Road has all the various Brand showroom laid out on it. Maruti, Nexa, Hyundai, Kia, Honda, Mercedes, Audi, Nissan, Renault, Tata, Mahindra, Ford, Volkswagen plus Bike Showrooms. Skoda, BMW and Toyota are missing. There are truck showrooms as well. But they are all in different commercial complexes.

[adi.mariner]

I remember visiting a Multi Car Showroom called Krishna Motors in Mulund West, Mumbai around 10 years back when I was buying the Swift. They had Maruti, Hyundai and Toyota cars on display and told me that they would give more discounts than the authorised dealers. However looks like that model hasn't worked and they are now a Maruti Suzuki Dealer (Hare Krishna Motors). The reviews certainly are not positive at all.
https://m.mouthshut.com/car-dealers/...iews-925040779

[anilp]

This model has been tried out in limited forms in India by the erstwhile Tata-Fiat joint venture. As you'll be aware, it was a grand disaster.

The Tata-Fiat dealerships I visited during that time neither managed to promote each brand's mutual synergies nor managed to sell enough. To top it all, each used to cannibalise the other due to vicious competition between the respective salespersons.

Other reasons like the manufacturers not wanting to break the comfortable status quo of existing arrangements is yet another issue. Combined dealerships will also need much higher investments from the promoter is my understanding (not sure about this though).

PS: Service centers are the biggest revenue spinners for Indian car dealerships (for two wheelers too). When you try to sell multiple car brands under the same roof, you have to spend significant efforts and capital on setting up service centers if you have to get those profits. That could be yet another reason why multi brand car showrooms are yet to take off in India.

[Rajeevraj]

It is a nice idea, after all pretty much all our consumer goods, apparel are sold through multi brand showrooms, supermarkets and malls. Challenge here I guess is the fact that the single dealership model and pipeline is strongly established and changing that will not have any benefit for the manufacturer.

A Car Mall is a good idea through. In any case we do have a lot of pockets where multiple dealerships are in the same complex or very close to each other on the same road. A nice mall version of that would be attractive to all stakeholders in my opinion.

[Karan_n8]

There's multi car dealership we've been buying and selling from called Auto cars in Kirti Nagar, New Delhi. One stop solution for any brand/make/vehicle from Hyundai to Jaguars. In house insurance team and a pre worshiped division as well. When we're done negotiated till the last inch with the dealerships, we hit them with the best quote we have and we've always got at least 10 grand over and above that. Kind of works like a DSA if I'm not wrong.