Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, the two primary home-grown auto makers in India, reported continued pick-up in the sales of heavy commercial vehicles, but their passenger vehicle sales showed a declining trend, though not as sharply as in case of market leader Maruti Suzuki.
Passenger vehicle sales for M&M fell to 13,134 in September 2021 from 15,973 in August. This also represented a 12% decline from the 14,857 passenger vehicles sold by Mahindra & Mahindra in September last year.
Tata Motors also saw a sequential decline in passenger vehicle sales when compared to August, but the company was still able to show a year-on-year increase due to a low-base effect.
Tata Motors sold 25,730 passenger vehicles in September, down from 28,018 vehicles in August. However, this was up 21% from 21,199 vehicles sold in September last year.
Nevertheless, a clear slowing down of growth was visible in Tata Motors’ numbers too, as the company had reported a 51% year-on-year jump in August. In fact, for the six months of the financial year, Tata Motors’ passenger vehicle numbers are still up 53% despite the slow-down seen in September.
Mahindra too is seeing a clear slow-down in PV sales, which fell 12% in September. Despite the poor performance seen in September, the company’s PV sales are up 81% for the first six months of the financial year. The company’s PV sales had grown 17% on year in August.
However, none of these numbers were as bad as that of market leader Maruti Suzuki, which reported a whopping year-on-year fall of around 55% in its India sales to just 68,815 — one of its lowest monthly tallies in recent years.
All three companies blamed the ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips for the poor sales.
On the other hand, sales of heavy commercial vehicles continued to pick up momentum after remaining dull for more than a year because of COVID-related uncertainties.
Tata Motors’ medium and heavy CV sales were up 88% in September on a YoY basis, while that of M&M doubled. M&M’s light CV sales were impacted during the month.