Fuelled by GST rate cuts, car sales hit top gear in festival season

Maruti, Tata, Mahindra log record growth as Navratri demand lifts car sales; logistics bottlenecks emerge amid surge

Domestic passenger vehicle (PV) wholesales in September rose 5.4 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to 381,437 units, driven by the recent goods and services tax (GST) rate rationalisation and the onset of the festival season, according to industry officials.

But this surge has brought its own set of challenges: An industry wide logistical constraint, with carmakers struggling to move vehicles fast enough from factories to dealerships.

 

Retail sales could be even stronger. Industrywide volumes were estimated at nearly 400,000 units, compared with 320,000 a year earlier, said Partho Banerjee, Maruti Suzuki’s senior executive officer (marketing and sales), during a video

 

press conference. 

Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest carmaker, reported a 9.1 per cent jump in domestic wholesales to 144,962 units. Banerjee attributed this uptick to the GST shift and festive fervour. Bookings at Maruti alone crossed 350,000 units in September, up 35 per cent from last year, while retail sales reached 173,500 units, an increase of 27.5 per cent Y-o-Y. Tata Motors moved to second place in the domestic PV sales rankings, leapfrogging both Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) and Hyundai. 

 

Its September wholesales stood at 59,667 units — a 45.3 per cent jump from a year earlier. M&M was just behind with 56,233 units, up 10.1 per cent, while Hyundai slipped to fourth with 51,547 units, eking out a 0.9 per cent rise.

 

For Maruti, small cars were a standout, with bookings rising 50 per cent overall and doubling outside the top 100 cities. Among individual models, the newly launched SUV Victoris pulled in 25,000 bookings, with customers facing a 10-week wait.

 

The Navaratri period delivered record demand for Maruti’s cars. In the first eight days of the festival, the company retailed 165,000 units, its highest in a decade. Customer enquiries soared to 700,530, and bookings hit 150,000. Last year’s Navaratri tally had been just 85,000. “What we are seeing right now is pent-up demand, which is likely to taper in the coming months,” Banerjee noted.

 

Shailesh Chandra, managing director of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd, called September 2025 a “watershed month” for his company. The company clocked total PV sales — domestic and exports combined — of 60,907 units, up 47 per cent Y-o-Y and its highest ever. 

 

The momentum was also powered by the company’s green-fuel portfolio. Electric vehicle sales nearly doubled Y-o-Y, climbing 96 per cent to 9,191 units, while CNG sales topped 17,800 in the September quarter, up more than 105 per cent over the year-ago quarter. “With a strong booking pipeline, agile supply readiness, and accessible pricing, we are well-positioned to carry this growth momentum into the second half of FY26,” Chandra said.

 

Even so, the industry is feeling the strain. Banerjee flagged bottlenecks in dispatches since the new GST rates took effect on September 22. Trucks now take nearly 20 days for a round trip. “We expect logistics to normalise by October 10,” he said.

 

M&M has also been wrestling with the same problem. Nalinikanth Gollagunta, CEO of its automotive division, said: “The surge in festival demand has placed significant constraints on availability of trailers. We are working to improve dispatches to our dealer network within the constraints.”

 

Despite that, M&M posted strong numbers: SUV sales of 56,233 units, up 10 per cent Y-o-Y, and total vehicle sales of 100,298 units, a 16 per cent rise. “Thanks to GST 2.0 and pent-up demand, we have seen robust growth in dealer-reported customer retails during the nine days of Navaratri, with over 60 per cent growth in the SUV segment and more than 70 per cent in commercial vehicles compared to last year,” he said.

 

Maruti Suzuki’s performance on the export front was equally striking. Rahul Bharti, its senior executive officer for corporate affairs, said September brought the company’s highest ever monthly exports, at 42,204 units — a 52.2 per cent jump. “We are now exporting in a quarter what we used to export in a year just four years ago. In the first half of this year, we have already crossed 210,000 units. This is like a 21-gun salute to “make in India, make for the world”. In August and September, we shipped over 6,000 electric vehicles,” Bharti added.

 

India’s two-wheeler majors also reported healthy growth in September amid GST relief. Hero MotoCorp’s domestic two-wheeler wholesales rose 5 per cent Y-o-Y to 647,582 units, TVS Motor’s increased 12 per cent to 413,279 units, and Bajaj Auto’s were up 5.3 per cent at 273,188 units.