Indian Car Sales Figures – June 2017

While the entire country was awaiting the biggest tax reform of the century; the Indian Auto Industry had to brace itself for yet another jittery month. The anticipation of price reduction kept many prospective customers at bay and even the OEMs/dealers weren’t ready to endure the loss for their stocks post price reduction (due to GST). Anyhow the retails numbers were much better than the numbers posted here (which is the dealer offtake data). The OEMs flooded the market with discounts and pull crowds into their respective showrooms. Even the automobile dealers were under pressure to reduce their respective stocks before GST implementation. The Industry in overall has gone through various challenges and the varying regulations have kept the OEMs on their backfoot. This led to the worst YoY degrowth Toyota has faced ever (YoY degrowth was over 85% and it ranked 10th in the list!). The Indian Auto Industry also de-grew over 11% YoY in June’17. The only silver lining is that all models have seen a significant price reduction after GST and will surely revive the demand – We expect the Industry to bounce back to double digit growth from July’17 onwards. Let’s look at the modelwise analysis here:

Highlights:

Even with the challenges revolving around GST, Maruti could post a positive growth. However, its bestsellers (Dzire, Swift & WagonR) couldn’t garner the second spot and lost it to Grand i10. Also the Nexa channel offerings – SCross & Ignis looks to be under pressure as the sales dwindle to all time low.
Hyundai’s star performer was again the Elite i20. It ranked No.1 in the Premium hatch category and dethroned Baleno from the top slot. Creta sales however was below par as the price reduction sought in SUV category was very high.
Honda is on a roll this year. The New City and the recently launched WRV has clearly revived the OEMs performance. WRV was able to overtake Ecosport’s numbers and has positioned itself strongly in the Compact SUV space. The strong feature list (Sunroof, Digipad & Cruise Control) in the WRV has made it a very attractive buy and the higher ground clearance has allowed to garner sales in upcountry markets as well. However, it seems to have cannibalized Jazz’s numbers to an extent – Jazz’s volumes have dropped below 1,500 units for the first time in past 15 months! Even the VW Polo sales were higher than Jazz in June’17.
Toyota is clearly disappointed with the way Indian Government has been changing the policy structure. Earlier the NGT ban on diesel vehicles, then followed by Demonetization and finally the GST. Because of this, Toyota had to bear tremendous losses and June’17 was a testament for it. The OEM clearly stopped its dispatches in June as the price decrease expected on its portfolio of products was very high (Fortuner prices were slashed by over 2 lakhs in July’17!).
While Renault had a blockbuster FY17; this year is full of challenges for the French automaker. Its dependence on a single model is costing it high and it seems to struggle without new launches. Any drop in Kwid sales impacts the OEM heavily and it isn’t able to significantly revive Duster’s sales (even post the launch of Petrol/CVT variant).
Mahindra yet again survives with the performance of its old warhorses (Bolero & Scorpio). With muti million dollar investment in new product development (Xylo, Quanto, TUV300, KUV100), it had expected to retain its dominance in UV segment. However, the poor sales figures of these models and stiff competition from the biggies like Maruti (Brezza) & Hyundai (Creta) has put the Indian OEM on its backfoot.

Look at Top 25 selling models of June 2017 –