Maruti Suzuki sales down 48% to 76,976 units in Covid-19-impacted March

Even as the Indian automobile industry braces for the impact of Covid-19 on its sales, the first clues to a disastrous March are in: market leader Maruti Suzuki India's March sales. At 76,976 units, its March 2020 numbers are down a whopping 48% year on year (March 2019: 147,613).  This is easily the worst monthly sales performance for the company in a very long time, and a comment on how difficult sales will be for the PV industry progressively this year. 

Cumulative domestic market sales in FY2020 are 1,436,124 units, down 18.1% (FY2019: 1,753,700). Blame it all on the prolonged economic slowdown, the shift to BS VI along with the impact of the coronavirus which has stopped customer footfalls and brought consumer and market sentiment to nought.

Sales in FY2020 
April: 131,385 (-19.61%)
May: 121,018 (-25.06%)
June: 111,014 (-17.18%)
July: 98,274 (-35.52%)
August 2019: 93,173 (-36.1%)
September 2019: 110,454 (-27.1%)
October 2019: 139,121 (2.33%)
November: 139,133 (-3.3%)
December: 122,784 (2.5%)
January: 139,844 (0.3%)
February: 133,702 (-2.3%)
March: 76,976 (- 47.9%)
Total: 1,436,124 (-18.1%)

Check out the details in the sales table below and you can see that sales across all sub-segments are down. Both the 7-pack lot (Wagon R, Swift, Celerio, Ignis, Baleno, Dzire and Tours S) and the utility vehicles are down a massive 50% YoY in March 2020.

The scenario is similar for the the 12 months of FY2020 where all vehicle sub-segments are in the red. Clearly, tough times in store for the passenger vehicle market leader and in turn the industry.