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Growth accelerates for passenger car OEMs in February

The Indian passenger vehicle industry is headed for a record fiscal. From the first few sales numbers released by some leading carmakers for the month of February 2018, it is abundantly clear that growth is here for stay for the segment.

While the country’s leading carmaker Maruti Suzuki continued to reign in terms of sheer volumes, selling 136,648 units and growing 13.3 percent, home-grown Tata Motors saw demand rising for its latest UV offering – Nexon – along with the Tiago hatchback, leading the company to post robust growth of 45 percent.

Maruti Suzuki

With sales of 136,648 units in the month, the company registered year-on-year growth of 13.3 percent (February 2017: 120,599) in the domestic market. Maruti Suzuki cumulatively sold 1,496,297 units between April-February 2018, growing 13.7 percent (April-February 2017: 1,315,946) and with its continued strong performance, the company is headed to set a sales record for itself and surpass the 1.5mn mark in the fiscal. Given the pace of sales, driven by new models like the Swift and Dzire as well as the game-changing Vitara Brezza, Maruti Suzuki clearly is going to achieve its best-ever sales for a fiscal year in FY2018. In FY2017, it had sold a total of 1,443,641 units (+10.59%).

In February 2018, while the entry-level Alto and Wagon R siblings registered nearly flat sales of 33,789 units (February 2017: 33,079 / +2.1%), the set of compact cars including the Swift, Ignis, Baleno and the DZire together went home to 65,213 buyers, posting significant growth of 38.7 percent (February 2017: 47,002). Interestingly, Maruti launched the third generation of the Swift hatchback at the Auto Expo at the start of February; given the pent-up demand among buyers for this model, it is already being seen in good numbers on the roads.

If there is a worry for the company, then it is in the dwindling numbers of the premium Ciaz sedan, which is facing the heat from the competition in the C-segment. The sedan, which is now being sold through the Nexa premium car sales channel, was able to garner sales of 4,897 units, declining by 16.8 percent (February 2017: 5,886). The new Hyundai Verna and the Honda City are giving it a tough time, and the fight is only set to become fiercer once Toyota introduces its Yaris sedan in the country in May 2018.