The Hyundai Creta, the Korean carmaker’s best-selling product in India, has cruised past the 700,000-unit sales mark in the domestic market.

The popular midsize SUV has taken 81 months since its launch on July 21, 2015 at a starting price of Rs 859,000, to achieve the latest milestone, which came at the end of FY2022 when it clocked cumulative sales of 712,372 units in the domestic market.

Since then, till-end May 2022, the Creta has added another 23,624 in the first two months of FY2023 to take the India total to 735,996 units (see data table below).

Second-gen Creta maintains growth trajectory
The first-generation model held sway for nearly five years, after which it handed over the baton to the new Creta, launched on March 16, 2020. Sustained demand for the new Creta helped maintain the growth trajectory and despite the Covid-induced loss of sales, particularly in the early part of FY2021, as well as plenty of new competition – both direct and indirect – in India’s booming SUV market, the new Creta has held its own.

Hyundai’s strategy to remain bullish on diesel, compared to some other carmakers in India, is paying off. The Creta’s pack of powertrains comprises 1.5-litre petrol, 1.5-litre diesel and a 1.4-litre turbocharged petrol engine options. Clearly, the new BS VI-compliant diesel motor is keeping pace with the other two when it comes to market pull.

The Creta also gets an automatic transmission option with all three engines, including the recently-introduced iMT or intelligent manual transmission – a clutch-less manual gearbox – solely with the 1.5-litre petrol engine. Moreover, the new Creta's modern features like a panoramic sunroof, a 10.25-inch touchscreen paired with a Bose audio system are a huge draw for buyers.

Interestingly, as per Autocar India, three out of every five Cretas sold in India have a sunroof, which is now a critical feature across the brand’s current model range.  and the upcoming all-electric Ioniq 5 crossover will sport one too.

Car buyers in India are increasingly growing conscious about the level of safety in their vehicles. In April this year, the Creta received a three-star rating in the Global NCAP crash test.

Big contributor to India’s SUV story
Hyundai Motor India is the No. 2 UV player in India with a market share of 16.82% in FY2022 and the Creta is a big contributor to its UV growth story. In FY2022, of the carmaker’s total UV sales of 250,430 units, the Creta accounted for 118,092 units or 47 percent. Further underscoring its importance is when one tallies Hyundai’s total UV sales – over a million units – since FY2016 through to end-May 2022: 10,84,307 units. Of this, the Creta accounts for 735,996 units or 67.87 percent of the carmaker’s total UV sales.

Not surprisingly, the Creta has been among the movers and shakers of India’s UV market. In FY2021, the UV segment crossed the million-units sales milestone for the first time – 10,60,750 – and the Creta contributed 120,035 units or 11% of total UV sales. In FY2022, when UV sales clocked 1.48 million sales, the Creta contributed 8% to the segment.

The Hyundai Creta’s contribution to the robust India SUV story can be gleaned from the fact that of the total 6,951,922 UVs sold from FY2016 through to end-May 2022, the Creta with 735,996 units accounts for 10.58% of the total.

The Creta has been the UV market leader for nearly four years but the No. 1 position was usurped in FY2022 by the hard-charging Tata Nexon, which beat it by 6,038 units to the title thanks to the Tata Nexon EV contributing its numbers.

Over 250,000 made-in-India Cretas exported
Adding power to the Creta story is the SUV’s export performance. As per Autocar Professional’s data analytics, a total of 256,508 Cretas have been exported till end-May 2022 (see stat table below). It also helped Hyundai regain the No. 1 exporter crown in FY2020 and hold on to the crown in FY2021. 

Club the Creta’s domestic and export sales numbers and what you get is 992,504 units, just 7,496 units shy of the cumulative one-million-units milestone, which would have been surpassed in June 2022.
 

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