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Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL)‘s Nexa channel would sell around six-lakh vehicles in the next financial year and expects to close this year with sales of about 3.70 lakh units, the company said on Friday.
If that happens, the company may sell more cars than what Hyundai Motor India (April-February — 5,16,947 units) or Tata Motors (April-February — 4,94,596 units) are selling currently in the domestic market per annum.
The market share for Nexa is in excess of 10 per cent now in the overall industry on a standalone basis, Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Officer-Marketing and Sales, MSIL, said.
MSIL sells models including Baleno, Grand Vitara, Ciaz, XL6 from the Nexa network, and both the upcoming products — Fronx and Jimny — will also be sold through its outlets.
Nexa has already sold more cars than other manufacturers like Mahindra & Mahindra, Kia India, Toyota Kirloskar Motor India, Honda Cars India, Renault India and MG Motor India in the April-February 2022-23 period. In the same period, Nexa’s sale has been more than cars sold by Honda Cars India, Renault India, MG Motor, Skoda Auto, Volkswagen India, Nissan India and Citroen India all put together (3,23,697 units).
“We are hopeful that Nexa, which is currently number four in the industry, will make it to the position of the second largest brand in the auto industry next year. It accounted for about 23 per cent of our total sales this year. Nexa has grown by 47 per cent this year and we expect to close sales this year at around 3.70 lakh units against 2.55 lakh units sold last year,” Srivastava said.
Nexa, MSIL’s premium channel, on Friday also achieved the two-million sales milestone. The first million came in four years, while the second million came in three years despite Covid, the company said. Currently, Nexa has 460 outlets covering about 280 cities, and MSIL expects these numbers to increase in the next FY.
Talking about bookings of the two upcoming models, Srivastava said the company had received 15,500 bookings for Fronx and a slightly higher booking of 23,500 for Jimny.
“The response is good given the fact that we have not yet announced the prices and we will be starting the sale of these models sometime in April,” he said.
PV growth
Talking about the overall passenger vehicle industry growth, Srivastava said it is expected to be somewhere in the range of 5 per cent to 7.5 per cent.
“This year, it is expected that the industry sales will close at around 3.89 million. That’s a growth of almost 26 per cent over last year’s 3.07 million. So, on this base of 3.89 million, we expect the volumes next year to be between 4.05 million to 4.1 million. Of course, it builds in a lot of assumptions regarding overall economic growth,” he said.
Anything that affects the overall economy always affects the auto industry as there’s a very high correlation between auto industry volumes and the overall economic growth, he added.
“Of course there are some red flags that we have to look at which might impact the demand next year. One is the El Nino effect which affects the monsoon. It would affect agricultural income, which in turn would hit rural sentiments,” Srivastava added.
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