Rise In First Time Car Buyers Due To COVID, Says Maruti

New Delhi: The share of first-time buyers has gone up by 5.5 per cent to around 51-53 per cent in Q1, says Maruti Suzuki.

Overall domestic sales increased to 97,768 units by 1.3 per cent in July 2020 compared to last year’s 96,478 units during the corresponding period.

A senior official from Maruti has reportedly said that people are preferring personal mobility over public transport in this pandemic which is why the percentage of first- time buyers and additional car buying have increased.

“First-time car buying is up and replacement buying is down, which means exchange is down. However, additional car buying is also up because of the functionality requirement,” Maruti Suzuki India Ltd Executive Director (Sales and Marketing) Shashank Srivastava told PTI.

He explained the trend by saying that income levels are probably going to be suppressed for some time which is why replacement buying is down.

Maruti is seeing increased enquiries for mini and compact segments. In July, Alto and S-Presso grew by 49.1 per cent at 17,258 units but that of the compact segment (WagonR, Swift, Celerio, Ignis, Baleno and Dzire) was down 10.4 per cent at 51,529 units.

“Going forward we have to carefully watch. Long-term demand will depend on the fundamentals of the economy. Also, it will depend on which way this ‘COVID sentiment’ moves, that is a very uncertain thing. We have to also closely watch the local lockdown because it does disrupt the momentum of retails at both the dealer end as well as the consumer end,” Srivastava said.

He also pointed out that local lockdowns which are uncertain are leading to 81-91 per cent outlets being open. As far as the upcoming festive season is concerned, he is careful and says that it depends if there is “positive development in the ‘COVID side'”.