The Big Picture: The big issue of the month of August is production halt at Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant. The said plant produces hot sellers like the Swift and DZire. This has resulted in loss of market share for Maruti by 1/3rd and downfall of overall market by almost 11%. This shows how important the performance of Maruti is for Indian automobile market. But still even after such a huge loss, Maruti Suzuki managed to retain first position. At number two, there is Hyundai as always with gain in volumes of close to 2.5%, followed by Tata Motors at number three.
Tata Motors threatened Hyundai by coming really close last month, but failed to maintain momentum and showed loss of volumes by almost 15%. We don’t see any change in Mahindra’s volumes even though they launched refreshed Verito last month. The reason is all other models lost their volumes which shadowed Verito’s gain. Some good offers and discounts made Ford, GM and Honda to gain some numbers but there appears to be a matter of concern for German twins as both Volkswagen and Skoda lost 18% and 12.5% respectively. For second month consecutively, Renault is showing spike in sales, the reasons are well known to us: Duster. Surprisingly Nissan is also doing well by gaining 13.5%. And for Fiat, things are getting worsen as sales went below 500 mark, which is bound to happen with current strategy of the company.
Top 20 chart might surprise all of us with green arrows all over, even in falling market. The reason is simple; loss of someone is always a gain for others. Often 2nd and 3rd place holders Swift and Dzire went out of Top 20 list itself and made way for others to climb the ladder in the chart. But there is no reason why Alto should lose the sales numbers, as it is being manufactured at Gurgaon. The loss of volume is so bad that its sibling WagonR stood just 410 units behind it. Tight economy and leaked details of upcoming Alto 800 might have served as a reason for common man to put their car buying decision on hold. In the league of small cars, Mahindra Bolero stands out proudly at 3rd position. Have you noticed the Nano doing 6507 numbers? It shows that there is still some potential in the product. One of the strongest gainers is Eeco, Maruti Suzuki might have pushed it very hard to recover the lost volumes and retain its position. Once again, the Indigo range has slid down the ladder strongly; with 3629 units it stands at the bottom most position in the chart.
Company wise Break Up: The overall results for Maruti might be as predicted by many of us, but performance of Alto is very disappointing. With sale of 50,129 units, Maruti’s market share came down to a mere 29.2%, it is very damaging for Maruti but it was unavoidable. The impact of the lockout at Manesar is well held up by strong performance of other cars like WagonR, Ritz, Eeco and all others. The volumes brought in by other cars like Eeco looks quite doubtful and Maruti Suzuki might have managed the figures for the purpose of presentation. At the bottom of chart, devastating performance by A-Star with mere 114 units sold last month. Maruti has to buck up and get back the numbers rolling in favor of them. Hyundai at the same time is enjoying 2.44 % rise in sales. i20 is consecutively leading the sales parade for Hyundai with 7500+ units being sold consistently. Except Verna, performance from every model is good. The Verna seems to be losing out its share to UVs or to rivals.
For Tata Motors, Nano is still showing some life in its sales graph with once again rise in sales figures for last month with 6507 units sold. Tata showed good recovery in the month of July by regaining its lost number 3 position from Mahindra. Month of August once again saw falling sale but the company managed to retain its position intact. Overall in August, they sold 22,311 units with -14.97% change in sales over last month. Mahindra launched its refreshed Verito and is showing up in sales with 2102 units getting dispatched. But this gain in sale got covered up by loss of sales of every other vehicle. In all there is no such change in sale for Mahindra last month.
For Toyota, all the flagship models have lost some numbers and hence recorded overall loss of 3.97%. Honda is actively managing their portfolio by focusing on specific products, announcing newer cheap versions and cutting costs. This is evident in 24.72% rise in sales for August and surprisingly City is leading the chart ahead of Brio. Nice work by Honda even when their portfolio is paralyzed with petrol only cars.
For GM India, Beat and Tavera are the only cars doing four digit sales numbers. Others are just trailing below 500 and are waiting for a refreshment. Only the Tavera has gained volumes this month but even then GM has managed a rise of 2.59% in sales. Another American manufacturer, Ford seems to making space for updated Figo and is pushing the current version. We can witness it in 6295 units getting sold in August. This gave them a strong rise of 25.72% in sales.
The German giants Volkswagen and Skoda are suffering very badly and losing sales numbers consistently. Pricing and after sales service of these cars is doing the damage for the companies. When VW managed 4397 units, Skoda is facing bigger problem with sales falling below 2000 mark and no new product/upgrade ready at hand for launch soon. Volkswagen has launched top end Polo and Vento with added features and reduced prices which might pump in some volume from next month.
Renault-Nissan alliance is working out well for both of them as both companies are gaining volumes slowly and new products getting launched or ready for launch. With Sunny and Micra, Nissan managed 13.47% rise in sale and with Duster, Renault managed a staggering 127.25% rise in sales of August. The coming months may bring in more cheer for Nissan, as the Evalia makes it to the market.
The usual slow movers of Indian automobile industry are HM-Mitsubishi and Fiat. For HM, sale is coming from only two cars, Ambassador and Pajero Sport. The rest 5 cars in their portfolio are adding up to 17 numbers only. New benchmark in negative direction is achieved by Fiat by selling only 470 cars in total and Linea being sold less than 100 numbers.
Category wise Break Up: All small car segment and entry level sedan segment took a hit last month because of Maruti Suzuki and hence we are seeing many arrows pointing downwards. Alto, Swift and DZire are the contributors behind this. No surprise we are seeing sedan’s pie is shrinking month by month and left behind UVs by large margin as there is difference of 15% in market share between them. This shows the trend of Indian automobile industry.
Gainers Vs Losers
Podium Finishers
Things to Look Out For In September 2012
o Sales Performance of updated Volkswagen Polo and Vento.
o Sales Performance of Renault Scala.
o Sales Performance of new Toyota Camry.
o Sales Performance of eefreshed Maruti Suzuki Ritz.
o Upcoming Nissan Evalia.
o Upcoming Mahindra Quonto.
o Upcoming Tata Safari Storme.
o Manesar plant output.
o Festive season coming up.
o Anticipated Rs. 5 price hike of diesel fuel and its impacts.