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Informist, Friday, Oct. 31, 2025

 

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--Maruti Suzuki: Company's retail sales in October has grown 30%
--CONTEXT: Maruti Suzuki mgmt's comments at post-earnings press conference
--Maruti Suzuki: Q2 results don't fully show substantial impact of GST cut
--Maruti Suzuki: Expect small-car retail sales to exceed sales of bigger cars
--Maruti Suzuki: Current high rate of car sales growth cannot be sustained
--Maruti Suzuki: Company's exports will cross 400,000 units this year
--Maruti Suzuki: Have over 30,000 bookings for Victoris
--Maruti Suzuki: Response from cities beyond top 100 cities has been strong
--Maruti Suzuki: Expect Oct-Mar industry car sales to grow 6-7% YoY
--Maruti Suzuki: Oct-Mar will be much better than Apr-Sept for co's sales
--Maruti Suzuki: Pending bookings at 200,000, ramped up output to meet demand
--Maruti Suzuki: Have exported 7,000 units of e Vitara so far
 

 

MUMBAI – India's top passenger car seller, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., on Friday said the cut in goods and services tax on cars has reignited the demand for smaller cars in the country. "We are going to see a change in our product mix. The retail sales of vehicles in this 18% (GST) category are likely to grow faster than the sales of vehicles in the 40% GST category," the company's Chairman, R.C. Bhargava, told reporters in a post-earnings press conference. Of the 350,000 bookings the company has right now, 250,000 are for smaller cars. 

 

Smaller cars like the Baleno and Swift have seen increased demand and currently have a waiting period of two-to-three weeks, depending on the variant and model colour. Small cars are those under 4 metres long with a petrol engine capacity of under 1,200 cubic centimetres or a diesel engine not exceeding 1,500cc. They currently attract an 18% GST, down from 28?rlier. Bigger cars are currently levied a flat GST rate of 40%.

 

Maruti Suzuki reported record-high car sales during the festival period, largely driven by small cars. "Bigger cars are also selling, but not quite that much," Bhargava said. The company's retail sales growth stood at 30% in October. "So that just shows that there were a lot of people wanting to buy small cars, the perception which some people had, that aspirations of all Indians have changed, and that nobody wants to buy small cars, and that the market has moved up to bigger and more luxurious cars. That perception has proved to be incorrect," Bhargava said.

 

The automobile industry has seen renewed consumer interest in cars post the tax rate cut, partly driven by festival period sales. Maruti Suzuki currently has 200,000 pending bookings. The company said it has been unable to keep up with this surge in demand but is ramping up production.

 

Bhargava acknowledged that this pent-up demand may not last. "I'm sure this heavy rate of growth, which we have witnessed, this high rate cannot sustain," Bhargava said. "But I also expect that in the small car segment, a double-digit growth should be possible for some period to come in the future," he said. Bhargava expects the automobile industry to report sales growth of 6-7% on year in Oct-Mar, following a lull in the first half.

 

While sales from the top 100 cities in India have been robust, demand for Maruti Suzuki's cars in cities beyond these has been even better, the company's Executive Director Partho Banerjee said. Bookings of cars which attract a GST of 18% have been 50% of overall bookings in the top 100 cities, and 65% in cities beyond these 100, Banerjee said. 

 

For the September quarter, Maruti Suzuki reported a net profit of INR 32.93 billion on revenues of INR 421.01 billion. "Remember, these financial results do not reflect even to a substantial degree the impact of the GST. This you will see coming in the period forward," Bhargava said. 

 

At a time when domestic sales have disappointed, Maruti Suzuki has increasingly relied on exports to bolster its overall performance. The company has already exported over 200,000 units in the first half of the current financial year and could cross the 400,000-mark by the end of this year, Bhargava said. Most recently, Maruti Suzuki began exporting its first-ever electric car, the e Vitara. The company has exported 7,000 units of the e Vitara so far to the UK. Maruti Suzuki said it will soon export the model to other European markets and to Japan. 

 

Maruti Suzuki recently began bookings for Victoris, its newest mid-sized compact sport utility vehicle. Banerjee said bookings for the model currently stand at 30,000 units and that he expects a waiting period of a few weeks. Nearly 38% of the overall bookings, or around 11,000, are for Victoris' variants with an underbody compressed natural gas tank.

 

Maruti Suzuki announced its earnings print during the market hours. Friday, the company's shares closed 0.1% lower at INR 16,186 on the National Stock Exchange.  End

 

Reported by Anand JC and Gopika Balasubramanium

Edited by Saji George Titus

 

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