The year 2019, besides marking the end of a decade, stands as an unfortunate timeline for the Indian automotive industry (passenger-car segment) despite seeing multiple launches and updates in almost all segments. As a matter of fact, the industry faced a double-digit fall for the first time in 20 long years!
The Indian automotive market, even though becoming the fourth largest in the world (overtaking Germany), had to go through a lot of hurdles in the past decade such as demonetisation, higher taxation, GST-implementation, rising fuel prices, BS6-updation and the associated economic slump that followed. Taking all these factors into account, here’s how the industry performed in the last 20 years:
Starting with the year 2001, overall sales stood at 6,54,497 units. Today, certain market leaders individually manage to cross this figure in just a few months’ time. The following year saw a growth of 7.2% at 701,366 units. The early-2000s ended with a 19.2 per-cent growth or overall sales of 836,138 units.
The mid-2000s marked the first seven-digit sales figure of the chart at 10,30,634 units; a growth of 23.3%. In 2005, the growth fell down to 6.5% or 10,97,566 units. The market became better in the following year with sales rising to 13,00,480 units with a growth rate of 18.5%. 2007 saw slightly reduced growth, but achieved a respectable 14,90,354 units.
2008, with an improvement of just 1.2%, saw sales hitting 15,08,112 units. The last year of that decade saw a strong 17.1 per-cent growth with a sales figure of 17,65,611 units. Things became even better in 2010 with a best-on-chart market growth of 32.4% or a total sales of 23,38,399 units.
The year 2011 marked the beginning of a rather slothful timeline for the Indian automotive industry. While 2011 and 2012 saw decent growth rates of 6% and 10.3%, respectively, 2013 faced the first sales decline (7.5%) of the chart. The sales figure stood at 25,31,092 units at the end of the early-2010s. The mid-2010s saw poor growth at 1.3%, 6.5% and finally, 8.4% or 29,60,775 units in 2016.
Indian automotive sales crossed 30 lakh for the first time in 2017 (growth of 7.7%) and 2018 saw a growth of 5% to raise the final figure to 33,49,386 units. Finally, in 2019, the Indian automotive industry plummeted by 12.3%. Overall sales were registered at 29,36,839 units. With the new decade starting off strong with Auto Expo 2020, we have to wait and see what the market has to offer to bring itself up from the fall.
