On the verge of completing a century in India ever since the first of Bentley rode the streets in 1911, Volkswagen AG's British luxury marquee brand is targeting billionaire industrialists and emerging Bollywood stars to steer the company to controlled growth over the next few years. Regional director – middle east, Africa and India, Bentley Motors Chris Buxton in an interview with Saahil Anant. Excerpts:

Most luxury car manufacturers talk about profitable growth in India and not about volumes. In terms of numbers, the market is quite small where only 10,000 luxury cars and 1.5 million of all other categories cars in a year’s span are sold. What is Bentley’s strategy here?

Our strategy is slightly different. As a company we have to go for profitability, but exclusivity is key. When the credit crunch hit in 2008, people stopped buying cars. We had to stop production during a large part of last year in order to absorb the stock that was in the world. Because our cars are ordered individually for every customer, we don’t build cars to stock up. Our strategy is brand awareness along with a controlled growth in India rather than setting sales targets.

Bentley entered the Indian market in 1911. How have you seen generations of Bentley buyers evolving?

We have a very strong following in India, and its one that we don’t want to spoil. I probably know the customers more in India than in the West Asia, though the market (for Bentley) is bigger there. The best part of my job is to sit with customers and learn from what they are really passionate about.

Who exactly are those high net-worth individuals customers who would buy Bentleys in India.

I know of a handful of the Indian billionaires, some of which own car companies and a lot of which own steel companies. And there’s also an emerging market in the film industry as well.

How does the Mulsanne complement the Bentley stable?

The new Mulsanne is a brand new car from the roader, what we call the big Bentley, and will come into the market in October this year priced at Rs 2.9 crore. The purity of materials used is key in the production of the car. When you sit in the car, you get the true old-fashioned Bentley details. But behind it is the latest technology — for example a 60 gigabyte hard drive, you can plug in your blackberry. The driving characteristics stay true to a very high torque engine – the reason we went for eight cylinders to give certain driving characteristics to a big car. If you look at the front wing, it goes up and down with different angles. You cannot do that in a modern steel press. So we heat that sheet of aluminium to 500 degrees centigrade and blow compressed air at it. That technology is used in aerospace.