Maruti Suzuki’s India (MSIL) small cars, Alto and S-Presso, continued to grow by more than 17 per cent y-o-y at 1,45,992 units between April and October this year, compared with 1,24,153 units in the year-ago period, even as there is an overall lower demand.
For instance, in FY21, MSIL sold 2,26,159 units of both the vehicles (Alto — 1,58,992 units and S-Presso — 67,167 units), which came down to 2,11,762 units in FY22 (Alto — 1,45,167 units and S-Presso — 66,595 units). Not only MSIL, Renault India, too, has seen a downward trend. The company sold 13,074 units of Kwid during April-October this year, compared with 17,824 units in the year-ago period.
The market leader of small cars expects the demand to decline in the coming months.
“The composition of vehicles sold in the market, compared to what the composition was earlier, is going to be different. And, there will be a high volume of sales in the upper end (bigger vehicles) of the market compared to the lower end,” RC Bhargava, Chairman, MSIL, had recently said. He added the company will debut newer products in the SUV segment, which are more in demand currently.
Both Alto and S-Presso are major contributors to the overall sales of MSIL, apart from other compact cars such as WagonR, Swift, Baleno and Celerio.
However, due to competition from other players such as Tata Motors and Hyundai Motor India, the market share of the company has been declining. MSIL’s market share till three years ago was 51 per cent in the Indian PV market, which has come down to 41 per cent now.
Having said that, Bhargava also noted that MSIL was still sticking to its target to sell 20 lakh units in the ongoing fiscal. “The main determinant of our ability to succeed will be semiconductors. At the moment, there is a constraint of semiconductors fundamentally from one company, and that is affecting four of our models,” he added.