Maruti Suzuki’s Ciaz, the company’s answer to the Honda City, sold a robust 6,345 units in October, making it one of the biggest selling cars in India.
In comparison, the Honda City, its biggest competitor, only sold 5,120 units. However, Honda could boast of another 3,482 unit sales of the Amaze and another 2,985 of its newly launched seven seater, the Mobilio.
Overall, Honda sales were up 18% year on year in October, while Maruti’s sales rose just 1%.
The Ciaz was unveiled earlier a month ago as India’s biggest car maker’s premium sedan offering. It replaced the SX4, which never really took off.
Maruti Suzuki would be happy with the reception to the Ciaz.
The performance is comparable to how the Honda City fared after its launch earlier this year. In May, for example, Honda City sold a total of 7,218 units.
Before the introduction of Ciaz, Maruti used to sell only around 200-500 sedans (exempting the Dzire, which is considered a super compact) a month.
The Ciaz, however, has not come close to what the Honda Amaze had achieved after its launch a couple of years ago. The Honda Amaze, for example, sold 9,564 units in October 2012.
In terms of overall performance, Maruti’s October sales in India was up just 1% year on year. The company would be disappointed with festive season performance.
Before October, Maruti Suzuki had been seeing an average of 13-15% growth in its monthly sales numbers. Due to the not-so-great October performance, Maruti Suzuki’s domestic growth rate for Apr-Oct has fallen to just 12.4% year on year.
Exports in October fell 23.5%, underlining the need for the company to spruce up its line-up. Maruti has recently unveiled a new model of its best-selling Swift compact, but it remains to be seen if the revamp will perk up sales and exports.
Sales in the compact segment, which includes Swift, fell 3.5% on year in October, while they had been trending up earlier. This indicates that Ciaz has eaten into Maruti’s own sales.
For Mahindra & Mahindra, passenger vehicles (which includes SUVs and the Verito) sold 19,254 units in October 2014, as against 22,924 units sold during October 2013. The company’s domestic sales stood at 40,274 units during October 2014, as against 47,787 units sold during October 2013. In October 2014, the 4-wheeler commercial segment sold 14,812 units, while the 3-wheeler segment clocked 5,678 units.
Tata Motors continued to see a decline in sales. Tata Motors’ sales of the passenger cars fell 12% year on year in October 2014 to 9,594. Its sales of utility vehicles, which includes the Sumo and Safari, fell over 40% in October to 1,917. As a result, overall passenger vehicle sales for Tata Motors fell by 19% to 11,511. This was below the 13,242 vehicles sold by Honda in India.
Finer details of Maruti sales in the table at the bottom.
|
Category : Sub-segment |
Models |
October |
Till October |
April’13 – March’14 |
||||
|
|
2014 |
2013 |
% Change |
2014-15 |
2013-14 |
% Change |
||
|
A: Mini |
Alto, WagonR |
35753 |
39379 |
-9.2% |
237474 |
243714 |
-2.6% |
436032 |
|
A: Compact |
Ritz, Celerio, Swift, Dzire* |
37083 |
38410 |
-3.5% |
289759 |
241170 |
20.1% |
440381 |
|
A: Super Compact |
Dzire Tour |
1408 |
989 |
42.4% |
8431 |
4965 |
69.8% |
10012 |
|
A: Mid-Size |
Ciaz |
6345 |
262 |
2321.8% |
8522 |
2728 |
212.4% |
4029 |
|
Total A: Passenger Cars |
80589 |
79040 |
2.0% |
544186 |
492577 |
10.5% |
890455 |
|
|
B: Utility vehicles |
Gypsy, Grand Vitara,Ertiga |
6027 |
7236 |
-16.7% |
38396 |
33640 |
14.1% |
61119 |
|
C: Vans |
Omni, Eeco |
10453 |
9786 |
6.8% |
72817 |
56753 |
28.3% |
102115 |
|
Total Domestic Sales |
97069 |
96062 |
1.0% |
655399 |
582970 |
12.4% |
1053689 |
|
|
Total Export Sales |
6904 |
9025 |
-23.5% |
70366 |
64137 |
9.7% |
101352 |
|
|
Total Sales (Domestic + Export) |
103973 |
105087 |
-1.1% |
725765 |
647107 |
12.2% |
1155041 |
|