Around 3,21,375 passenger cars were sold in the Indian market for March 2022. The sales remained stagnant when compared to March last year. However; it was the second month in succession that the Industry crossed 3 Lakh units dispatches.
March being a financial year-end has a lot of significance to the OEMs as they are running towards achieving their year's target. Hence you would see a significant spike in Industry volumes every March! A lot of buyers also finalize their purchases in March owing to benefit from the depreciation (as it is the final month in the FY). A lot of OEMs also push retails in March citing imminent price hikes from April.
Market Share of the Top 2 OEMs is being eroded slowly and the Indian Auto majors (Tata & Mahindra) are gaining hold over the successful new model launches by each of them. The trend is visible in Mar'22 too and Maruti lost 3.7% MS and Hyundai's share dipped by 2.5%. While Tata's Market Share gain was the highest at 3.9% and Mahindra's share increased by 3.3% when compared to March last year.
March 2022 saw the launch of Toyota's premium pickup offering - Hilux. Though only 43 units of the Hilux were dispatched in Mar'22; it shall an interesting attempt from Toyota to assess how the Indian consumers are going to spend heavily on a pickup model (Do note that Isuzu's attempt is not that successful with the V-Cross and Hilux would cost almost double than V-Cross!).
Maruti Suzuki sales dropped 8.4 percent and lost over 3.9% Market Share.
Hyundai recorded a drop of 2.5% in Market Share YoY and the volumes fell by 15.2 percent in Mar'22 v/s Mar’21.
Tata continues to perform well (source) and has been fighting hard to rise to the No.2 position. It gained the highest Market Share in Mar'22 over last year and has seen great traction for all its models. The spiked availability of its models amidst semiconductor shortage and definite visibilty in this IPL season as well shall even strengthen Tata's hold in coming times.
M&M volumes shot up by 64.5 percent in Mar 2022 over Mar 2021 and was placed at the fourth spot in the ranking table.
Kia placed fifth in the ranking table and sales increased 18.4 percent YoY. Kia India has shaken the MPV market with a breakthrough pricing for Carens and over 30% of Kia's volumes came from Carens in Mar'22!
MG sold 4,721 units in March 2022 compared to 5,528 units in March 2021. Even after the Astor launch, OEM lost 14.6 percent volumes YoY and the supplies is still not as expected due to the semiconductor shortage.
Škoda India recorded all-time highest dispatches of 5,649 units. The sales shot up 387 percent YoY and is supported primarily by Slavia dispatches in Mar'22! Around 2,665 units of Slavia were dispatched in Mar'22 and was the best-selling Skoda for last month.
Market Share Graph for March 2022 –
