Close to 843,000 cars were retailed during the festive season in FY23, up from 788,000 a year earlier. On back of a huge pent-up demand after the Covid-19, retails had touched 935,000 units during the festive season in FY21.
“A continuous improvement in the semiconductor supplies in addition to a strong demand and new launches are likely to help the industry touch record retails,” said Shashank Srivastava, senior executive officer, marketing and sales at Maruti Suzuki India.
The country’s largest carmaker has seen its sales advance at a brisk pace in recent months on the back of new launches in the SUV segment. As on September 8, it had an order book of 339,000 units, according to Srivastava. Typically, festive period accounts for a fourth of carmakers’ annual sales.
In anticipation of a good start to the season, carmakers dispatched 351,000 units to dealers in July – the highest ever monthly despatch – which is typically a lean season.
Tarun Garg, chief operating officer of Hyundai Motor India, said the South Korean carmaker is looking to make the most of festive season on the back of a series of new launches, with micro-SUV Exter being the latest. “The Onam bookings are very good and makes us very confident of a good season,” he said. Exter bookings have zoomed from 10,000 units in the prelaunch phase to 50,000 plus in less than 30 days of launch.
“This year, we are seeing stock levels at the Hyundai dealers coming back to normal – 20 days. It had dipped to 10-12 days in the same month last year. A strong surge of fresh bookings is boosting overall confidence,” said Garg.
As on September 9, Hyundai had bookings of 110,000 units. Shailesh Chandra, managing director of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility said the industry is expected to grow in single digit this season. “Largely new launches are driving the growth in industry, and we expect festive sales this year to be good, starting with Onam,” he said.
Tata Motors will continue to introduce new products and variants at regular intervals, to sustain consumer excitement for our products, Chandra added.
Led by new launches ahead of the season, the share of more than four-metre-long utility vehicle models in the total passenger vehicle models rose to 39.2% in June against 37% at the end of the 2022 festival season when the total number of models in the PV segment stood at 81 compared to 78 at the beginning of the year. Veejay Nakra, president of automotive division at Mahindra and Mahindra expects overall SUVs to continue to outpace the broader passenger vehicle industry in terms of growth.
“Given that our large SUVs continue to experience strong market pull and our enhanced production capacity plans, we do look forward to another exciting festive season this year,” he said.