Alto growth helps Maruti Suzuki gain more market share in mini car segment

Key highlights:

• Maruti Suzuki's market share in the mini segment is at a all time high of about 74%
• Alto sales of 23,618 units in May, a nine-month high
• Alto manages to shake of demonetisation blues effect

The mini segment car sales has pushed Maruti Suzuki's market share the segment even higher in the month of May. Maruti Suzuki's market share in the mini segment is at a all time high of about 74%.

This was due to the Alto reporting sales of 23,618 units in May, a nine-month high, according to a Motilal Oswal report. This was a 18.8% growth year on year for the Alto and 4.7% growth month on month.

Even a month earlier in April Maruti Suzuki's Alto sold a high 22,549 units. This was a massive 36% YoY growth and 19.5% MoM growth.

This was seen as the mini car segment seems to have recovered from the impact of demonetisation. The same was seen for Alto, which had taken a hit due to demonetisation.

From Alto recording sales of 23,320 units in November 2016, it had declined to 17,351 units in December 2016. It further climbed to 22,998 units in January 2017 due to the end of year offers to push sales and fell the following two months. It sold 19,524 units in February and 18,868 units in March.

This has contributed to Maruti Suzuki's rise in market share to 52.49% as it climbed to 1,30,248 units.

However, Renault Kwid in the same segment still has not quite managed to shake off the demonetisation blues. Kwid volumes stood at nearly 7,000 units in May.

While Kwid sales grew by 24.8% YoY in May, it however saw a 12.1% decline on a MoM basis. It sold 6,990 units in May this year.

In April, Renault sold 7,959 units of the Kwid, which was a 18.8% YoY decline in sales and 22.7% MoM decline in sales.

However, the A hatchback or mini cars segment (cars priced below Rs 3.5 lakh) has seen a growth 24.3% growth.

This was contributed by growth in sales of Hyundai Eon which was at 46.7% with sales of 5,330 units and Datsun RediGo with 193.1% growth with sales of 1,689 units during the month. This is besides the growth of Alto and Kwid during the month.

However, Tata Nano, in the segment, saw its sales declined by a large 58.5% as it sold only 355 units during the month.