Growth In Rural Market Helps Arrest Decline In Small Car Sales: Maruti Suzuki

Maruti Suzuki: A revival in the rural market has helped in arresting the decline in sales of entry-level small cars, which saw a 10 per cent growth in retail sales in October, top company officials of Maruti Suzuki India said on Monday. The company, which launched all-new version of its compact sedan Dzire priced between Rs 6.79 lakh and Rs 10.14 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi), is bullish on enhancing its share in the sedans category despite the fast growth of SUVs and asserted that it would continue to cater to all segments to preserve its high market share in the domestic market.

While the SUV segment has been growing, other segments are also important to the company to maintain high market share, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) MD and CEO Hisashi Takeuchi told reporters here. "The compact sedan segment is very reliable. So from a business point of view, it is very good and secondly in order to retain decent market share, we have to have a presence in each of the customer segments," Takeuchi noted.

MSI currently has over 40 per cent market share (wholesales) in the overall domestic passenger vehicle segment. In the sedan segment, it has more than 50 per cent market share. In the entry compact-sedan segment - which also has Honda Amaze and Hyundai Aura, among others - MSI has a market share of over 61 per cent in the April-September period of this fiscal year.

The sedan segment currently accounts for 8 per cent of the overall passenger vehicle volumes. In the case of MSI, sedans account for 10 per cent of the overall sales volumes.

MSI Senior Executive Officer (Marketing and Sales) Partho Banerjee said the company's endeavour is to serve all customer segments. When asked about the market situation, Banerjee said rural markets were performing better than the urban centres.

On the entry-level hatchback segment, he noted that the company was able to arrest the decline in sales between the first and second quarters of the current fiscal.

"In the month of October, we saw good traction with a growth of around 10 per cent in retail sales (in the entry hatch segment)," he said, adding that the recovery in the rural market has played a significant role in the revival of the entry small car segment.

In terms of retail sales, Banerjee MSI posted its best-ever performance in October with 2.02 lakh units.