A ride in demand for new cars during the festive season has been a known phenomenon. Car sales have reportedly grown at a brisk pace with the market leader Maruti Suzuki India and its rival Hyundai Motor India posting their best-ever monthly dispatches in October. Apart from these two, other automakers like Honda Cars India, Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors have also seen a rise in sales for the month.
Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) said its domestic sales surged by 24.7% during the month to 1,21,063 units as against 97,069 units in October last year. "With new models and product refreshments, we are upbeat on the festival season. In anticipation of good retail sales during this time, we have adequately prepared our network. This is the company's highest-ever domestic and total sales number." R S Kalsi, executive director, marketing and sales, MSI, said.
Sales of the company's small cars including, Alto and WagonR increased by 5.2% to 37,595 units compared with 35,753 units in the year-ago month. Dispatches in the compact segment comprising Swift, Estilo, Ritz, Dzire and recently launched Baleno rose by 37.7% to 51,048 units during the last month.
Rival Hyundai Motor India also saw its highest-ever monthly domestic sales at 47,015 units last month compared with 38,010 units in October 2014, up 23.7%. "Hyundai sales of 47,015 units are all-time high with an all-time high sales of Grand i10 at 14,079 units and continued strong performance of modern premium brands Creta and Elite i20/Active," HMIL senior vice-president (sales and marketing) Rakesh Srivastava said.
The company expects the growth momentum to continue in the coming months with improving customer sentiments, he said. Honda Cars India Ltd (HCIL) also reported a 52% increase in its domestic sales at 20,166 units in October. It had sold 13,242 units in the same month last year. "The festive demand has led to a strong growth for HCIL during October wherein we recorded our highest monthly sales of this fiscal year," Jnaneswar Sen, senior vice-president, marketing & sales, said.
Mahindra's domestic sales were up 21% 48,815 to units last month as against 40,278 units in October last year. "We are happy with our performance during October 2015, which has witnessed a positive growth of 20% backed by excellent response garnered from the recently launched TUV300 as well as other brands such as XUV500, Scorpio, Bolero and pickups. We are quite hopeful of this positive growth momentum continuing for the rest of the year," M&M chief executive (automotive division) Pravin Shah said.
