Car sales more than double this Navratri on better availability, pent-up demand

Consumers may not be going in droves to multiplexes this festive season but they are certainly making a beeline at car showrooms to book their desired models.

Reduced delivery periods, rising supply as well as pent-up demand are resulting in healthy sales growth for the top five carmakers.

"Customers were back in showrooms with all guns blazing after a gap of three years,” the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) summed up the mood as it released the Navratri retail figures. Overall retail sales increased by a massive 57 per cent compared to Navratri 2021. All categories also showed extremely high growth with two-wheeler, three-wheeler, commercial vehicle, passenger vehicle and tractor sales increasing by 52 percent, 115 percent, 48 percent, 70 percent and 58 percent, respectively, FADA said.

A senior official of Maruti Suzuki, India's top carmaker, claimed while the industry retail sales in the Navratras were around 175,000 units, his company sold 81,000 units during the same period. Last year, it was 77,000 units for industry and 36,000 for Maruti, said the official.

“This time, Navratra included the month-end period and also better availability of vehicles. We saw strong retails in the Navratra period this year with about 175,000 vehicles retailed in the industry," Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Director (Marketing & Sales), Maruti Suzuki India, told Moneycontrol.

However, he said, "This is more than double the last year’s numbers but a comparison with last year is misleading as vehicle availability was much better this year and it also includes the September month-end period, which always sees a spike in deliveries.”

Likewise, Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) delivered more than 30,000 vehicles across the country in the 10-day Navratri period.

Tarun Garg, Director- Sales, Service and Marketing, HMIL, said, “There is an extremely positive retail sales momentum for us during the festive period as customers continue with their preference towards personal mobility. The booking inflow during this period too continued to be strong, thereby adding to the already existing healthy pending booking pipeline. We expect the booking and retail momentum to continue until the most auspicious Dhanteras and Diwali period.”

For Tata Motors, rural and urban demand during the festive season is growing at a similar rate. Interestingly, rural sales contribute up to 38-40 percent of total Tata Motors passenger vehicle sales.

"We hope that the growth rate of Navratra sales is around 140 percent over last Navratra (including Dussehra). The trend continues to be more Automated Manual Transmission (AMT)-centric, compared to MT (Manual Transmission)," said a Tata Motors spokesperson.

Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) too is seeing sales rising for its SUVs and small commercial vehicles, starting with Navratri.

“We continue to see strong demand across our brands in both segments with an order book of around 2.6 lakh plus units. Demand is extremely strong for Bolero Neo, XUV300, All-New Thar and All-New XUV700. With the recent blockbuster launch of All-New Scorpio-N and commencement of bookings last month, we expect the order book to increase substantially throughout the festive season,” Veejay Nakra, President – Automotive Sector, M&M, said.

Kia India, which is growing at around 25-30 percent in 2022, expects to retain this momentum in the remaining months of the year.

“Our order books have been ringing and we expect the festive season to be a ‘blockbuster’,” Hardeep Singh Brar, Vice President, and Head of Sales & Marketing, told Moneycontrol recently.

Meanwhile, FADA is expecting that the trend continues till Diwali so that 2W dealers also have a good season and are able to exhaust the stock they have built in anticipation of robust sales growth.