Maruti Suzuki's domestic sales more than doubles to 148,380 units in Sept

Maruti Suzuki's domestic passenger vehicle (PV) sales in India more than doubled in September this year to 148,380 units due to new launches, the resolution of semiconductor chip shortage issues to a large extent, and the onset of festival season.

India's largest carmaker had in September last year sold 63,111 units in the country. Auto companies count wholesales, which are dispatches to dealers, as sales.

"Maruti Suzuki's market share in this month was 42 per cent. In September last year, it was quite low as we were having problems with semiconductor supply issues. Therefore, the market share in September 2022 has jumped by 7.8 per cent compared to September 2021," Shashank Srivastava, executive director of sales at Maruti Suzuki, said at a virtual press conference.

He said the chip shortage issue had been resolved to about 95 per cent, and it would be difficult to say when it can be resolved entirely.

"Earlier, we were working to resolve chip shortages for all models. Now, we are focusing on availability for specific models," he added.

The sales of Maruti Suzuki's utility vehicles -- Brezza, Ertiga, S-Cross, XL6 and Grand Vitara -- have increased from 18,459 units in September 2021 to 32,574 units in September 2022.

However, for Maruti Suzuki, Alto was the number one car sold in September because of variant K10 launched in August. "In September, 24,700 units of Alto were sold," Srivastava noted.

He said Brezza was the largest selling sport utility vehicle (SUV) last month in the country, with 15,445 units.

"We also started the dispatches of Grand Vitara. So our figure (of 148,380 units) also includes the sale of 4,770 units of Grand Vitara," he added. The company launched Grand Vitara on September 26.

He said the pending bookings for Maruti Suzuki in India stand at about 412,700. "That is still a large number. I am told that the other auto companies also have large pending bookings. Going forward, the challenge for the industry is to get the production in line with the underlying demand," he added.

He said during the first five days of Navratri, the average bookings have increased by 12 per cent compared to the same period of the festival last year. "This rise is as per my expectation," he mentioned.

He said that the retail sales of the domestic auto industry are expected to stay below the wholesale numbers in September. 

"This is the sixth straight month where the wholesale has exceeded the retail sales, which means there is a build-up of stock in the network. At the beginning of April, there was a stock of 119,000 units in the domestic auto industry's network, which has reached 239,000 right now. Therefore, the stock in the network has reached normal levels," he added.