India’s largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki India witnessed a tad rise in domestic sales in February, 2014. With a sale of 99,758 units as against 97,955 units sold in the same time last year, MSI posted a hike in February sales by 1.8%. However, the cumulative sales dropped marginally by 0.42% with a total of 1,09,104 units sold in February 2014 (including exports) as compared to 1,09,567 units sold in February 2013. The company could not do well in the export front and witnessed a fall of 19.5% at 9,346 units shipped to international markets in February 2014 as compared to 11,612 units exported last February. Low demand in small car segment is also one of the reasons behind low cumulative sales. In February 2013, MSI sold 41,311 units of Maruti 800, Alto, WagonR and A-Star, which fell to 37,342 units in February 2014 registering a slump of 9.6%. First time buyers usually opt for small cars, however, with a fall of 9.6% in this segment, it seems that customers are resisting investing in cars despite the recent price cut announced last month.
B segment hatchbacks from MSI, Swift, Estilo and Ritz witnessed a rise of 19.4% with 28,672 units sold collectively in February 2014 as against 24,021 units in the same period last year. Maruti Suzuki India’s new entrant in the B segment roped in good number of bookings, however details regarding its sales last month, are still under the wraps. Only in March will we get to know about the performance of Celerio in terms of sales.
Swift Dzire continued its upward trend; however there isn’t much difference in the sales of February 2013 and 2014, but still a slight hike has been registered at 18,353 units in contrast to last year’s 18,316 units. SX4 saw a growth of 6% in sales with 228 units sold last month as compared to 215 units in February 2013. Maruti’s premium sedan Kizashi did not register any sale, hinting at the immediate need to work on boosting its sales in the domestic market.
Domestic sales are expected to improve further in the coming months, new products are also being lined up for launch this year including Ciaz sedan which is said to be replacing SX4. Facelifts of Swift and Dzire are also due for launch which we can expect to see soon in the showrooms.
