After months of lull owing to the lockdown enforced by the coronavirus pandemic, the month of July has finally bought some cheer for the Indian auto industry. The last few months haven’t been easy owing to supply constraints, rising input costs and frequent opening and closing of showrooms. But steps like shifting sales online and coming up with innovative finance schemes have helped fuel the demand for new vehicles. And as people look for personal mobility tools to fulfill social distancing norms, both car and bike manufacturers are looking positively at the coming months. We take a look at how some of the leading automakers fared in the month of July when it came to sales of new vehicles.
Maruti Suzuki
The country’s largest carmaker has come a long way from selling no cars in April to crossing the milestone of 1 lakh cars in July. Maruti Suzuki sold an impressive sold 108,064 cars in July, this also included 1,307 units of the Glanza given to Toyota and 6,757 units exported by the company. In comparison Maruti sold just 57,428 cars in the previous month, which means there was a big growth of 88.2 per cent last month. Even when compared to the same month last year, the company recorded a small fall of just 1.1 per cent, indicating that that the demand for its cars is getting back on track. In fact 7 of the top 10 selling cars in the country in July were from Maruti Suzuki.
Hyundai India
Korean car maker Hyundai sold a total of 41,300 units in July 2020 with 38,200 units sold in the domestic market while 3,100 of its made in India cars were sent to export markets. This was a decline of 28 per cent when compared to July 2019 when the company had sold a total 57,310 cars. But looking purely at domestic sales the situation was much better as the company sold 38,200 cars which was a fall of just 2.07 per cent. However, there was a strong growth in sales when compared to June 2020, as the company recorded close to 42 per cent growth which certainly brought some cheer to India’s second largest carmaker. The Creta has been the best seller for Hyundai with 20,000 units sold since the lockdown began.
Renault India
This was a big surprise as the French car maker’s sales in July not only grew when compared to June but were also significantly better that July 2019. The company sold 6,422 in July, while in the same month last year it was able to sell just 3,660 units. The big improvement in sales is being attributed to its newest car in the market, the Triber. Since its launch Renault has been able to successfully sell more than 35,000 units of the MPV in the country so far. The launch of the Triber AMT has also added to the growing sales. The new Kwid is also making a significant contribution in sales, and recently the company announced that the hatch had crossed the 3.5 lakh sales milestone in the country.
Hero Motocorp
Leading the path of rapid recovery, Hero MotoCorp, the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters, continued the resurgence of the domestic two-wheeler sector, with month-on-month sales growth for the third consecutive month since operations resumed in May. In a market environment that continues to be volatile, Hero MotoCorp sold 514,509 units of motorcycles and scooters in July, registering a growth of 14% over June 2020. 506946 of these were sold in the domestic market while the rest were exported. Even when compared to July 2019 the company was able to reach more than 95% of wholesale dispatch numbers.
Honda Motorcycles & Scooters
Second on the list of companies that sold the highest number of two-wheelers in July was Honda. After a quadruple jump in dispatches in June, dispatched a total of 3,21,583 units in July, adding over 1 lakh units compared to the previous month on back of increasing demand for personal mobility in the Covid-19 era. About 3,09,332 of these two-wheelers were sold in the domestic market while the rest were exported. In June, Honda had sold 2,02,837 bikes and scooters just in the domestic market. The month of July also saw the Japanese bike-maker becoming the first in India to unlock the 1 million BS6 sales mark. It remains to be seen if this strong demand continues in the upcoming festive season or it remains subdued when compared to previous years.
The writer is Senior Editor at carandbike.com.