With the festive season around the corner and inventories rising to five-year highs, automakers are doling out mouth-watering discounts to car buyers.
Attractive offers are galore, ranging from Rs 20,000 to Rs 200,000. These include cash discounts, exchange, loyalty bonuses and corporate discounts. In addition, dealers are also doing their bit by offering discounts on accessories.
While festive offers are valid till October 31, some have been going on for slow-moving models, especially compact hatchback and sedans.
What is interesting is that discounts are being offered even in the sport utility vehicles (SUV) and CNG-powered models – both perceived as high demand segments. This could be an indicator of the sluggishness in the retail demand.
Bundled with dealer offers, car market leader Maruti Suzuki is offering Rs 61,000 discounts on the Alto, Wagon R, Celerio and S Presso while the Swift is carrying Rs 54,000 worth of offers.
Shashank Srivastava, senior executive officer, marketing and sales, Maruti Suzuki India said, “It is not a general discounting trend across all models because there are some models which have a waiting period. We have started to modulate production of those models where supply exceeded demand and the inventory was higher.”
With the exception of Exter, Venue and Creta, Korean auto brand Hyundai is offering discount on all other models ranging between Rs 10,000 and Rs 200,000. While the Grand i10 Nios has consumer offers of Rs 43,000, the Aura is carrying benefits of Rs 33,000. The all-electric Kona is offered at a whopping Rs 200,000 discount.
SUV-specialist Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) is offering discounts of up to Rs 90,000 on the XUV300 and Rs 125,000 on the all-electric XUV400. Its highest-selling models Bolero and Bolero Neo are carrying discounts of Rs 70,000 and Rs 50,000, respectively. There are no offers on the XUV700, Scorpio N and Scorpio Classic.
With the introduction of upgraded variants of the Nexon, Safari and Harrier, discounts to the tune of Rs 50,000 to Rs 140,000 are offered on the older variants of these models.
Premium SUVs such as Toyota Hilux, Citroen C5 Aircross, Volkswagen Tiguan, Jeep Meridian and Compass, MG Hector and MG ZS EV are giving discounts between Rs 100,000 and Rs 500,000.
According to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) the inventory days for passenger vehicles have zoomed to 60-65 days. This has been contested by carmakers who state that the inventory days are at ‘satisfactory levels’ at around 30 days though Srivastava agreed that they are at a five-year high.
Manish Raj Singhania, president, FADA said, “Carmakers are giving incentive to carry paid up stock of entry level models for inventory above 30 days. They issued a circular on this last month about giving interest to the dealers.”
He added that in the last couple of years consumers were not getting any discount because there was huge gap between demand and supply. “Consumers can expect 5-10% of the value of the vehicle and bargain for more,” he added.
Carmakers are expecting record sales of 1 million units in the entire festive period that will see strong number of deliveries and registrations during the Navratri, Dussera and Diwali period spread over October and November.
