‘Luxury market is growing in India, and we needed to be here’: Wolfgang Thelen, founder of Maybach Icons of Luxury

Maybach automobiles has fallen in love with India after the German luxury carmaker sold more than 500 units in the country in 2024. The company has shown a 145 per cent growth annually, making India among its top 10 markets worldwide. The luxury car – its prices start at Rs 3 crore – is unusually a favourite with younger Indians, a growing tribe of the new rich with expensive taste and a passion for fancy cars.

Maybach is over 100 years old; when Wilhelm Maybach created the luxury car brand that soon began to symbolise quality and luxury, using fine materials to make a high-end product. Maybach is now owned by Mercedes as Mercedes-Maybach. Maybach Icons of Luxury is a family-owned company, also German, that has extended the Maybach brand into more accessible but high-quality and handcrafted lifestyle goods.

“Indians have long been shopping from our stores in Dubai or Portugal especially,” says Wolfgang Thelen, founder of Maybach Icons of Luxury, at the opening of his family’s first boutique in India, in Bengaluru. “It’s a coincidence that we are coming at a time when Maybach is selling so well. The luxury market is growing in India and I felt we needed to be here,” he says.

Thelen says his company has 11 boutiques and 650 points of sale all over the world; with 20 percent each in the USA, Europe, Asia, and India-UAE together. “The cars do very well in India and fabulously in China. Our artisanal excellence finds many takers,” he adds.

The boutique is at the centre of the upscale Mall of Asia, and Thelen says more boutiques are coming up in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. “Bengaluru has a young tech community that we like. It is an evolving market. India’s growth rate is immense, just after China’s. These are exciting things. Besides, Indians are warm and welcoming so we are glad to be here.”

Does he believe the automobile industry and the retail business are two different entities or do they feed off each other? “There is a connection for sure. Maybach is a heritage brand, but specialise in luxury especially for men,” he explains. “We have limited products that are inspired by the car. For sure, our success is connected to the car’s success. But in 2012, the car’s production was stopped but we continued. The car came back only three years later, after Mercedes took it over,” he adds. Icons of Luxury showcases its line of signature eyewear, many pieces made of real gold and real teak, as well as writing instruments and leather goods.

India is renowned for handcrafted products too. “But India’s craftsmanship is missing technology and we have that,” he avers. “We use the leftover horns from water buffaloes from India, we have been buying them for 40 years. We take it to Germany and produce high quality items with it.

Thelen says he has also collaborated with Sabyasachi for his eyewear for the US market in the past.

Lifestyle