Maruti Suzuki India Limited has announced that it has recorded growth in September 2020 in terms of volume sales. This may be the inital signs that demand for automobiles is finally gaining traction, despite the adversities and challenges of the times. In September 2020, Maruti Suzuki’s total sales accounted for 160,422 units. This resulted in growth of 30.8% over the same period from 2019. However, the performance must be taken with a pinch of salt as all of last year, demand for new vehicles was at an all-time low in India.
The domestic sales in the month of September for Maruti Suzuki stood at 150,040 units. In addition, 2,568 units which were supplied to other OEM (Toyota) for a cumulative domestic vehicle sales of 152,608. The automaker exported 7,834 units in the same time period. This meant that domestic sales were up by 32.2% while exports grew by 9% from last year.
In the second quarter of the 2020-21 financial year (July-September), total recorded sales for MSIL stood at 3,93,130 units seeing 16.2% growth from the same period last year. Maruti Suzuki closed the first half of the fiscal with total sales of 4,69,729 recoding -36.6% in the red. The overall performance of the first half was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as stated by Maruti Suzuki. However, the performance in the last quarter, on the other hand, shows positive signs towards a revival of demand for new cars in India.
Month on month vehicle sales numbers show that the Indian automotive industry is beginning to show signs of revival from the downturn it faces last year, in addition to the severe impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.