Mumbai: The luxury carmaker DaimlerChrysler India, the 100-per cent subsidiary of German carmaker DaimlerChrysler AG, has outlined a new business strategy - the pre-owned car business - to improve its topline growth.

The German carmaker, which is on an aggressive turnaround path, will experiment with the new strategy with its newly launched New E-240 range of Mercedes Benz cars, a highly popular car brand among all the Mercedes Benz series.

The pre-owned car business is targeted at those who want to upgrade to newer models after trading their old car. Even those who do not want to buy new cars and want to just sell their old cars are welcome. The old car is reconditioned at the dealership and offered with warranty for a specific period.

Says DaimlerChrysler India managing director and CEO Hans Michael Huber: ''Though the concept of pre-owned car business was very much in existence, we were not active on this front due to the lack of required number of cars in the market for exchange. But, during the last two years we have sold over 2,000 cars, mainly in the E-Class series, and we hope that an aggressive introduction of the pre-owned car business would attract buyers.''

He adds: ''We will stop the production of the existing E-Class range of cars over a period of time so that the existing Mercedes E-Class-owners would get a chance to upgrade their cars with the newly launched E-240 range though the pre-owned car business. The company has set a sales target of around 1,500 in the year 2003, and expect 600 will be from the E 240 range.''

DaimlerChrysler India, which is on an aggressive turnaround path, has doubled its profits in 2001 and has come out of the clutches of the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR). The company made a profit of Rs 40 crore in calendar 2001, more than double the Rs 20-crore achieved a year earlier.

Says Huber: ''The company sold around 1,350 cars in 2001, which marks a 65-per cent year-on-year growth, and posted a total turnover of around Rs 300 crore. The turnover was up around 45 per cent year on year.''

DaimlerChrysler, formerly Mercedes Benz India, became a sick company that went into the BIFR clutches more than three years ago. DaimlerChrysler head (corporate affairs) Suhas Kadlaskar says the prime reason for the high proportion of profit to turnover is the low investments and outsourcing of all activities outside the core business.

He adds that the company sources bulk of its component requirements from six suppliers who provide the company with assembled kits. Each of its locally-made cars is painted by Tata Engineering, which has a plant adjacent to that of DaimlerChrysler's in Pimpri near Pune.