After three months, car sales look up in April

Demands of newly launched vehicles such as Hyundai Creta, Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza and Baleno, and Mahindra’s KUV100, over the last few months, have helped passenger car makers report better sales for the first month of the current fiscal after three months of declining trend.

The trend is expected to continue, said the industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Monday. Two-wheeler segment also grew in April.

However, the growth is mainly coming from the urban and semi-urban and not rural areas because many newly launched cars have not reached the rural markets yet, Vishnu Mathur, Director General, SIAM, told BusinessLine .

He also added, “There are positive signs from the rural areas as Rabi crop has been good and predictions for monsoon are also good this year.”

According to the latest data shared by SIAM, passenger cars segment grew by 2 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to more than 1.62 lakh units in April compared with around 1.60 lakh units in corresponding month last year. Utility vehicles have also grown 43 per cent YoY to 62,170 units (against 43,526 units), which has led to a double-digit (11 per cent) growth of the total passenger vehicles segment.

Similarly, in the two-wheelers segment, the motorcycle sales grew 16 per cent YoY to around 10.25 lakh units during April against 8.82 lakh units in April 2015.

The scooter sales grew exponentially to 4.68 lakh units in April, up 36 per cent compared with around 3.45 lakh units in April last year.

While Hero MotoCorp got higher numbers due to new avatars of its successful brands like Splendor Pro, Splendor Plus, Passion Pro and Xtreme Sports, its counterpart Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India got successful with its new launches like the ‘Navi’ and Dream Neo with more value added style.

The upswing in bike sales during the last month can be mainly attributed to wedding season also, Mathur said, adding that the industry has to see if this continues as the rural demand still remains subdued.

In the commercial vehicles segment, heavy commercial vehicle segment is witnessing demand from the replacement segment as well as demand for new vehicles due to infrastructure and mining segments gaining steam, Mathur said.

The double-digit growth across all segments (except passenger cars) has led to an overall growth of 20 per cent in the grand total of all categories at 19.01 lakh units in April compared with 15.83 lakh units in April last year.

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