Celerio adds to sales, though overall Maruti Suzuki sales fall by 5.5 per cent

Maruti Suzuki has announced a 5.5 per cent decline in overall sales in March. The company sold 1,13,350 units last month in comparison to 1,19,937 units in March last year.

Exports during the month fell by 8 per cent to 11,081 units as compared to 12,047 units in March last year. This year, domestic sales of the company decreased by 5.2 per cent. The manufacturer sold 1,02,269 cars as against 1,07,890 cars in March 2013. 

The good news for the company was that though the sales of mini segment cars, including M800, Alto, A-Star and WagonR declined by 11 per cent, the compact segment comprising Celerio, Swift, Estilo and Ritz rose by 9.3 per cent. This year 40,085 units of mini segment cars were sold as compared to 45,047 units in the corresponding month last year.  In March last year the automaker sold 25,868 units of cars from this segment. The Celerio, in fact, added to the overall 28,285 units of compact segment of cars sold. 

The compact sedan from Maruti Suzuki, the Dzire, did much to sustain the falling sales figures. With 17,237 units of the car sold in comparison to 20,078 units in the corresponding period last year, the sales declined by 14.1 per cent. Sales of the company’s mid-sized sedan SX4 showed a fall of 54.5 per cent with 411 units delivered to customers as against 903 units delivered to buyers in the same month last year. There was no sale of premium sedan Kizashi last month.

There was a marginal increase of 0.2 per cent in the sales of utility vehicles that include the Gypsy, the Grand Vitara and the Ertiga. In all 6,499 units of these cars were sold in March 2014 in comparison to the 6,488 units in the corresponding month last year.

Sales of vans Omni and Eeco were boosted by 2.6 per cent with 9,752 units sold in comparison to 9,506 units sold in the same period last year.

Maruti Suzuki launched the Celerio at the start of this year with the introduction of the AMT (automated manual transmission). This is for the first time in India that this feature has been launched in any of the compact segment of cars. The demand for cars with this feature has increased and other manufacturers are also considering equipping their cars with the same. And needless to say the Celerio has proved to be quite a winner for the company as the car is garnering a lot of demand.