March 6, Wednesday Mumbai: Tesla, The U.S. electric vehicle (EV) maker has made its entry into the Indian market a step closer by leasing space for its first showroom in Mumbai. Tesla has signed a five-year lease effective from February 16, 2025, on a 4,003 square feet property at the Maker Maxity building in the Bandra Kurla Complex near the airport in Mumbai.
The initial annual rent is approximately $446,000, with a 5% increment each subsequent year, totaling over $2.5 million across the lease term. This comes after Tesla’s earlier attempts to penetrate the Indian market were put on hold last year.
The new push is in line with recent high-level interactions, including a meeting between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States. Tesla has since been aggressively hiring for several mid-level jobs in India, including store operations, service, and customer relationship management roles, as signs of readiness for a larger market entry.
Although Tesla intends to export imported EVs from its Indian dealerships, it is confronted with the high import duties, which amount up to 110%.
Musk has criticized the high duty in the past, calling it one of the highest in the world. America is pushing India to lower or eliminate these tariffs as a condition of a proposed trade deal, seeking to open the Indian market to American companies such as Tesla. India has been reluctant to cut tariffs to zero immediately, opting for phased reductions instead, with domestic carmakers expressing concerns over possible effects on local manufacturing investments.
The opening of Tesla’s showroom in Mumbai’s Maker Maxity building, a leading business and retail complex, places the company well to respond to the increasing demand for EVs among Indian buyers. This step not only marks Tesla’s dedication to the Indian market but also indicates the changing automotive environment in the country, where clean and innovative mobility solutions are on the rise.
As Tesla weaves through the intricacies of penetrating a market with high import tariffs and an emerging EV ecosystem, its success in India has the potential to impact more general policy-making and stimulate increased adoption of electric mobility in the country. Keep Reading Questiqa.in for more updates.
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