Hyundai drives closer to recovery with sales of 38,200 units in July

Hyundai Motor India, the country’s second-largest carmaker by sales volumes, has announced sales of 38,200 units in July, which a marks 2% year-on-year decline (July 2019: 39,010 units), albeit on a low base. Compare July’s performance to June 2020 (21,320 units) and last month’s numbers indicate 79% month-on-month growth.

According to Tarun Garg, director, Sales, Marketing & Service, Hyundai Motor India, “The July domestic sales volume is 98 percent of July 2019 domestic and this performance was driven by good customer demand for the new Creta, Venue, Verna, Elite i20 and Nios.”

Like other carmakers and the overall industry, the company had had to face the brunt of the pandemic-induced loss in consumer demand. However, what is giving the Chennai-based OEM a new charge is the surge in demand for its new Creta SUV. On July 29, the company announced receiving 55,000 bookings for the new Creta, and delivery of 20,000 units of the SUV within four months since its launch on March 16.

And, in a time of social distancing, Hyundai’s digital ‘Click To Buy’ campaign seems to have clicked with consumers. The company also states that the Creta is the most researched car on its online retail platform with 30 percent buyers enquiring about the SUV and over 76 percent of bookings of the car coming online.

Moreover, to further strengthen the product and boost its sales, on July 22, Hyundai introduced a new clutchless manual transmission (iMT) in its Venue sub-compact SUV. The Venue has already crossed the 100,000-unit milestone in India and Hyundai now risks in-house competition from sibling Kia Motor India that is set to unveil the Sonet crossover on August 7.

From the looks of it, Hyundai will be aiming to ride the wave of demand for its top-selling brands – Creta and Venue – but will Kia act as a sales speedbreaker? Seen another way, Hyundai Motor Group will be the winner.

Put Hyundai and Kia’s UV market shares together and what you get is a combined UV share of 36.7% for Q1 FY2021, nearly nine percentage points higher than the 27.66% the two Korean carmakers had in FY2020.

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