Announcing yet another price hike in the Indian market, Hyundai Motors India Ltd (HMIL) said on Monday that the company is going to hike the price of its cars in India by up to 2 percent from January next year. Hyundai has blamed the upward shooting price of row materials and rising production cost for this hike. As per a statement given by Mr. Arvind Saxena, Director, Sales and Marketing at HMIL, the input cost is increasing and company was bearing it for a long time but now when profit margins are squeezing, it plans to share its cost burden with the customers. He added that by January 2011, the prices of Hyundai cars will be increased by 1.5 to 2 per cent.
The announcement of price hike from Hyundai comes following the similar price hike announcements from Maruti Suzuki and General Motors. Where the General Motors India has announced a price hike of up to 2.5 percent in its cars in India, Maruti is yet to disclose the size of this prospective price hike. As more and more car makers are announcing price hikes in the Indian market, the car sales in the month of December are expected to witness a substantial rise.
At present, HMIL is the second largest car maker in the Indian market and sells a range of cars in the country including small car Santro Xing, hatchbacks like i10 and i20, sedans including Verna Transform and Sonata Transform, and recently unveiled luxury SUV Hyundai Santa Fe.
In Nov 2010, Hyundai India’s cumulative sales saw a fall of 12 percent over the sales of same period previous year. The company sold 44,542 units of its cars during this month as compared to 55,241 units sold in the same period last year. However, in the domestic market, the company’s sales grew to 31,540 units as against 28,162 units sold in the same month last year
