India’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki is clearly dominating the compact and small car space, as a huge chunk of their total sales is from this segment. Some of the most sought after Maruti cars, which helped the company post an increase in sales, were Alto, Swift, Dzire and Baleno – all posting sales of well over 2 lakh units. (Alto and Dzire crossing 2.5 lakh).
Together, these 4 cars accounted for over 54% of company sales in FY2019. This was an increase by about 2% from FY2018. Of these four cars, Alto is from the small segment, while the remaining three are from compact segment. In the small segment, Maruti has included their Alto and the old WagonR. While in the compact segment, Maruti has included Swift, Dzire, Baleno, New WagonR, Celerio, Ignis.
PTI reports that in an investor presentation recently, the company revealed that compact car sales comprised 49.7% of its total sales last fiscal in domestic market. This is an improvement of 16.5%, as compared to 2017-18 when 45.3% sales was from this segment. In 2018-19, total sales were 8,71,864 units, while in 2017-18, the figure stood at 7,48,475 units. Total sales have also improved for Maruti Suzuki, up 6.1% from 16,53,500 units in 2017-18 to 17,53,700 units in 2018-19.
Equally good is Maruti’s performance in small car segment, which contributed 21% to overall sales. Maruti’s top cars in this segment are Alto and old WagonR, which registered domestic sales of 3,68,990 units in 2018-19. However, this is lower than 4,27,183 units sold in 2017-18, partly because new WagonR now comes under the compact segment. Alto continues to be the top selling small car, with 2,59,401 units sold in 2018-19, as compared to 2,58,539 units sold a year ago.
Primary growth drivers for Maruti in compact car segment are updated products like Swift and Dzire and new models like Baleno. All three cars have recorded positive growth during the last fiscal with Dzire registering sales growth of 5.71%, Baleno 11.47%, and Swift 27.28%. Baleno sales are set to grow even further this year, as Maruti will be selling the car to Toyota, which will retail the rebadged Baleno as Glanza at their dealership. Sales of Glanza are included in Maruti sales report of April 2019 as “sales to other OEM”.
Maruti’s utility vehicles have also registered brisk sales throughout 2018-19, contributing 15.1% to the company’s total sales. Top products in this segment include Vitara Brezza, S-Cross, Ertiga, and Gypsy, which sold a total of 2,64,197 units. A year ago, UVs recorded sales of 2,53,759 units, which was 15.3% of Maruti’s total domestic sales.
