IndiGO Auto Group has announced it has formed an alliance and received an investment from Pon Holdings BV, a transportation and mobility company and luxury brand distributor in the Netherlands. The investment’s sum and the stake that Pon is taking in indiGO have not been disclosed.
IndiGO Auto Group, of Houston, has 10 dealerships in Houston, St. Louis and Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage, Calif. The group sells 11 luxury brands: Porsche, Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, Maserati, BMW, McLaren and Lamborghini.
The alliance will change little at the dealership level, indiGO CEO Todd Blue told Automotive News. But the undisclosed investment amount and the strategic partnership will help the dealership group “grow in a larger, more thoughtful way than maybe we would have been able to do by ourselves,” through organic growth and acquisitions, Blue said.
Pon is focused on “how the car business is really the mobility business,” Blue said.
Blue did not elaborate on mobility projects indiGO and Pon plan to work on together, but he said indiGO is prepared to adapt to the changing field of mobility.
“We have to look at the car business as the mobility business. That is a huge reason why we selected Pon to be our partner and why they selected us because we have a tremendous focus on that,” he said. “The focus is specifically this: being flexible and adaptable to the change and to be able to quickly in a nimble way be whatever mobility is. It allows us to maximize our current luxury portfolio and utilize [Pon’s] knowledge in other sectors to create a holistic mobility company at the retail level.”
“IndiGO Auto Group provides us with the ideal platform into the U.S. vehicle market,” a Pon spokesman said in a statement. “Our combined expertise in luxury vehicle sales, along with indiGO’s outstanding reputation and established leadership position in several key regions, offer a great starting point upon which we expect to achieve thoughtful but significant business growth in the North American market in coming years.”
Said Blue: “This is not a normal public company. This is not private equity. This is not Warren Buffett. This is not any of that.
“This is a family business in Europe as a distributor that has chosen to come into retail automotive and partner with indiGO to focus on a very concentrated area and to take a leadership role and build on what indiGO has done.”
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