Maruti Suzuki expects 16 percent -18 percent growth during festive season, says top official

Top automaker Maruti Suzuki India is seeing good growth during the ongoing festive season with retail segment seeing around nine percent growth, said Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive-Marketing & Sales, in an interview with CNBC-TV18 on November 2.

Talking about the growth in retail sales this month and how the festive season is likely to be, Srivastava said estimate for growth in the festive period is around 16-18 percent.

"Maruti Suzuki's growth in retail is about nine percent; 1,62,000 units versus 1,51,000 units sold last year. So, there seems to be a little difference and 5,000 units have been added to the industry stock, industry stock now stands at around 3,35,000 units. There has been a good growth during the festive season, around 16 to 18 percent is the estimate," Srivastava said.

Talking about the small-car segment, which Maruti had dominated for a long time, the senior executive said that sales growth has been 'rather flat' even though the segment makes up nearly thirty percent of the total market. He added, however, that he expects to see a bounceback in small car sales as well.

"It's rather flat because it's still around 30 percent of the overall market. Growth in the small car segment was dropping over the last few months so that drop seems to have stopped. I would say it has stabilized and going forward, my expectation is that you could see a bounceback in the small car segment as well," Srivastava said.

Talking about the outlook for the rest of the year for Maruti Suzuki's exports, Srivastava claimed that Maruti's exports last year were its highest number of exports ever, totaling at 2,59,000 units. The senior executive added that he is hopeful that the automotive company will exceed last year's numbers.

"We are showing a growth in exports 1,54,00 units against 1,53,000 units between April and October last year. Last year, we had the highest number of exports that Maruti exported at 259,000 units and we are hopeful, going by the trend and the retails in the export market that we should be able to exceed last year's numbers," Srivastava said.

Talking about Maruti's growth in the SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle) and its current market share in the MPV (Multi Purpose Vehicle) and the MUVs (Multi Utility Vehicle) segment, the executive said that he expects the growth to plateau around high numbers.

"SUV share has been going up, in fact the MUV share also has been going up. The MPV segment has gone up to around nine percent and the SUV share has grown about 50 percent. Last year, it was about 43 percent for SUVs and about seven and a half to eight percent was MPV, so that B segment share which is the MUV which was last year 50-51 percent has gone up to almost 60 percent this year . Going forward, we expect it to sort of plateau around this number," Srivastava said.

Srivastava also spoke about changes in drivetrain trends and how that is likely to impact the automotive giant's numbers.

"We are going to see change in the powertrain trends, as you can see the hybrids have increased their share 1.9 percent against the cumulative 1.7 percent so far. The slight dip in the EV percentage here from 2.4 percent to 2.2 percent and diesel dipping down are very interesting trends to watch out for," Srivastava said.