New car sales in India continue on their downward spiral at -8% year-on-year in April to 183,388 registrations. This brings the year-to-date total after 4 months to 843,716 units, down 5% on 2013. Is it the start of the Datsun Go-effect? The Maruti Alto has a particularly weak month in April at just 16,763 units, down 16% on April 2013, and as a result only owes its pole position for the month to a few hundred units more than the Swift Dzire (16,008) and Swift (15,874). The Hyundai Grand i10 manages to gain two spots on March to break into the Top 4 for the very first time thanks to 9,612 sales and 5.2% share, passing both the Maruti Wagon R and Mahindra Bolero.
The Datsun Go already sells more than the entire Nissan range in India!
But the big event this month is the thunderous arrival inside the Top 10 of the all-new Hyundai Xcent, basically a sedan variant of the Grand i10: it is up a huge 25 ranks on March to land in 8th position with 6,663 sales and 3.6% share for its first full month in market. This already makes the Xcent Hyundai's 2nd best-seller above the Eon (#9) and i20 (#16). Another very well executed market-exclusive launch for the Korean manufacturer, as the Xcent is only sold in India for now. In the Top 10, notice also the Honda City staying extremely strong at #7 and Maruti Celerio brilliantly climbing back to #10.
The Honda City stays extremely solid in 7th place.
The other model we are following with great interest since its first appearance in the Indian sales charts last month is the Datsun Go. The Go targets the Maruti Alto and of course cannot pretend at such a fast shoot up to the stars as the Hyundai Xcent just delivered, as it is actually launching a (kinda) new brand in the country and a new philosophy for the Renault-Alliance as I described in Strategy: Understanding the Indian car market. In this context, the 30% sales increase on March to 2,690 units and 9 spot-jump to #22 is very satisfying. Keeping in mind April is down 20% on March, we are looking at a seasonally corrected 40% month-on-month hike for Datsun's baby. Symbolically, although the Go was below the Tata Nano last month (2,068 vs. 2,452), it sells nearly 3 times as much in April (2,690 vs. 1,027). Lastly and even more symbolically, this month the Datsun Go already sold more units than the entire Nissan range in India!
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