Launched on February 14, 2019, the compact SUV continues to witness strong demand and has helped Mahindra & Mahindra increase its utility vehicle share in India's highly competitive market bristling with many rivals.
14 Feb 2024 | 14112 Views | By Ajit Dalvi
The Mahindra XUV300 is five years old today – February 14, 2024. Launched on Valentine’s Day in 2019 in the Indian market, Mahindra & Mahindra’s compact SUV has sold over 240,000 units till end-January 2024 since launch and continues to play a key role in the company’s strong growth ...
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The Mahindra XUV300 is five years old today – February 14, 2024. Launched on Valentine’s Day in 2019 in the Indian market, Mahindra & Mahindra’s compact SUV has sold over 240,000 units till end-January 2024 since launch and continues to play a key role in the company’s strong growth in the ultra-competitive SUV marketplace.
As per SIAM and company data, till end-January 2024, the XUV300’s cumulative wholesales are 241,973 units. In the first 10 months of the ongoing fiscal, M&M has dispatched 47,672 units, which makes for average monthly sales of 4,767 units. At this pace, the XUV300 should drive past the 250,000 sales milestone by end-March or in April 2024.
Between February 2019 and January 2024, M&M has sold a total of 13,42,560 utility vehicles, which means the XUV300, with 241,973 units, has contributed 18% to that 1.34 million total.
That the XUV300 would become another Mahindra high-selling SUV was seen soon after launch. At a starting price of Rs 790,000, the company received 13,000 bookings in the first 28 days, averaging 464 bookings a day. Not surprisingly, the XUV300 drove into the Top 3 compact SUV rankings in its very first month. Within three months of launch – May 14, 2019 – the company had received 26,000 bookings.
Eight months later, in January 2020, the XUV300 aced the Global NCAP crash test with a five-star rating (under the previous GNCAP testing protocol) for adult occupant protection and four stars for child occupant protection, the highest combined result in Global NCAP’s #SaferCarsForIndia crash tests at the time. With growing conscious amongst Indian car buyers for safer vehicles, the XUV300’s strong crash test performance has served as a catalyst to accelerate its sales.
In the 60 months since launch, the XUV300’s best 12-month fiscal year sales were in FY2023 – 60,968 units, up 21% on FY2022’s 50,260 units, which were a sizeable 40% jump on the Covid-impacted FY2021’s 35,965 units. In the current fiscal year to date, May 2023 (5,125 units) has seen the best monthly wholesales. In CY2023, the XUV300 sold a total of 57,182 units, giving it 17th position in India’s Top 25 selling utility vehicles last year.
Sustained demand for the XUV300, as also for other Mahindra SUVs like the flagship XUV700, Scorpio N and Scorpio Classic, Thar, Bolero and Bolero Neo in the current fiscal year continues to help M&M increase its overall utility vehicle market share.
M&M, which is among the OEMs riding the continuing wave of demand for SUVs, has sold 376,845 SUVs in the first 10 months of FY2024, and has already surpassed its record sales of 359,253 units in FY2023. The XUV300, with estimated sales of 47,672 units between April 2023 and January 2024, accounts for 12.65% of the company’s UV sales in the ongoing fiscal year.
Since its launch five years ago, the XUV300 has seen one recall – in November 2019, M&M had recalled 16,908 XUV300s manufactured between November 2018 and May 2019 because a suspension component (front knuckle) might have an improper metallurgical condition which can cause it to deform in use.
Seventeen variants across petrol and diesel
Priced from Rs 945,000 (on-road Delhi) for the base P W2 variant through to the top-end Rs 17.78 lakh D W8 (O) AMT variant (on-road Delhi), the XUV300 is available in all of 16 variants – 11 petrol and six diesel – with standard-fit 6-speed manual transmissions for 14 variants and AMT for three. The 117hp, 300 Nm diesel engine is additionally available with the option of an AMT introduced in July 2019. Subsequently, the company upgraded the petrol to BS-VI emission norms and the growing demand for petrol cars saw the AMT introduced into the 110hp, 200 Nm petrol motor.
In October 2022, to rev up demand among driving enthusiasts, M&M introduced a performance-oriented version of the XUV300 christened XUV300 TurboSport powered by a higher-spec turbocharged gasoline direct injection (TGDi) that develops 130hp of power and 250 Nm of peak torque.
Smart and well turned out, the Mahindra XUV300 seems larger than its contemporaries and makes for a better five-seater than its many rivals. It is part of the extremely competitive compact SUV segment which also has the Tata Nexon and Punch, Maruti Brezza, Hyundai Venue and Exter, Kia Sonet, Renault Kiger and the Nissan Magnite.
Given the growing number of bookings the company has for the XUV300 as also for most of its popular SUVs, expect M&M to record best-ever fiscal-year sales in the region of 450,000 units or more in FY2024. And the XUV300, along with its siblings XUV700, Thar, Scorpio and the Bolero, has a wheel and more in that accelerated growth.
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