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A delayed festival season, coupled with high fuel prices and increase in total cost of ownership, led automobile companies to report only marginal sales growth in October 2018 against the same month in the previous year.
Those that launched new products — such as Hyundai Motor India (HMIL)’s Santro, Ford India’s Aspire and Maruti Suzuki’s ‘limited edition’ WagonR — managed to show better margins YoY in the passenger car segment.
In the two-wheelers segment, most of the companies reported double digit growth except Royal Enfield.
In the passenger vehicle segment, Maruti Suzuki India sold around 1.36 lakh units during the month, compared with a little over 1.35 lakh in October last year.
Bookings for the all-new Santro led HMIL to record its highest-ever monthly domestic sales of 52,001 units in October, compared to 49,588 units in corresponding month last year.
The Santro draw
“The all-new Santro clocked wholesale of over 8,500 units along with strong performance of the Creta, Elite i20 and Grand i100,” said Vikas Jain, National Sales Head, HMIL.
The Santro received over 28,800 bookings and more than 1,29,500 enquiries within 22 days, creating a record of sorts, he said.
Tata Motors also recorded double digit growth (11 per cent) to 18,290 units during the month, against 16,475 units in October 2017.
However, ‘Marazzo’ maker Mahindra & Mahindra saw growth of just 3 per cent to 24,066 units last month, compared to 23,453 units in the same month last year.
Ford India’s sales more than doubled to 9,044 units.
But Honda Cars India just missed matching last year’s number. The ‘City’ maker sold one unit less last month — 14,233 units against 14,234 in October 2017.
In the two-wheeler segment, Hero MotoCorp sold around 7.35 lakh units, up 16 per cent against 6.31 lakh units. Its rival Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India sold around 4.90 lakh units, against 4.37 lakh units in October 2017.
TVS Motor Company saw better footfalls during the festival season as it grew 25 per cent — to 3.39 lakh units during the month against around 2.7 lakh units in the corresponding month last year.
Double digit growth
In the commercial vehicles segment also most companies —including Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors and Volvo Eicher — reported double digit growth on a YoY basis.
According to analysts, the industry has witnessed strong growth from rural regions over the past few quarters. But, despite better Kharif output, farm profitability remains a key issue over the coming months; it could meaningfully impact rural sentiments. The festival season this year is expected to show muted growth as compared to the last year, they said.
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