Pre-bookings for Dussehra, Diwali do the trick for automakers

It’s time to bring out the bubbly for automakers, going by the festival season pre-bookings the industry has recorded. Despite limited discounts on offer and long waiting periods on many popular models, mainly because of capacity constraints, sales in the period between Dussehra and Diwali are seen up almost 30%.

“The month of October has been extremely good as far as sales were concerned. The demand was mainly driven by the festival period and pre-bookings done for Dussehra and Diwali. Compared with last year, our sales are up 45-50% this season,” said a spokesperson for Maruti Suzuki.

Rival Hyundai Motor expects sales between Dussehra and Diwali to have grown 30-35% year on year, said Arvind Saxena, director and board member, marketing and sales.

The demand was just robust, said Hyundai’s Saxena. “We witnessed a lot of optimism this season, as far as consumer buying sentiment was concerned. The economic activity has also been quite strong during the period, which is driving the buying pattern.” Hyundai had launched its i10 Next Gen and Santa Fe just before the start of the festive period.

On its part, Toyota is looking at a 20-25% growth in sales during this period.

“While capacity constraint remained a major concern as the waiting period was up to two months, advance bookings were at an all-time high for delivering vehicles on the days of Dussehra and Diwali,” said Sandeep Singh, deputy managing director marketing, Toyota Kirloskar Motor.

“We are now gearing up to ramp up our capacity from January.”
The two-wheeler makers are out feasting, too.

“We have had bumper sales during Dussehra-Diwali period. Our retail sales during the festive period have been better, and outpaced our despatches. Our retail sales crossed the six lakh mark between October 1 and Diwali, which is substantially higher than the retail sales of the corresponding period last year,” said Anil Dua, senior vice-president (marketing and sales), Hero Honda Motors Ltd.

Somewhat curiously, the usual festival season discounts and freebies were missing this time, perhaps obviated by the strong demand.

“This year, we did not offer any discounts on Bajaj vehicles owing the higher demand. We tried this strategy last year and we still received a great demand,” said Milind Bade, head of marketing, Bajaj Auto, without putting a number to the growth the company is looking at.

“We have built a strong customer preference for our brands, and there have been absolutely no discounts and freebies. Market demand continues to be buoyant and going forward, we are hopeful of sustaining this momentum,” said Hero Honda’s Dua.

Many car dealers though feel sales could have been much higher had the manufacturers offered more discounts and promotional schemes.

“The advance bookings for the delivery on Dhanteras and Diwali were high but footfalls fell during the period due to lack of discounts,” said a Mumbai-based Hyundai dealer.