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ShareMumbai: The used-car market which was dormant during the monsoon period has started to buzz up on account of early advent of the festive season in September.
Also, the valuations of used cars, which dropped 5-10% as compared with last year, have started rising as people look to buy cars after the end of monsoon.
Banwari Lal Sharma, assistant vice-president (product), Carwale.com, said, "After 4-5 months of no excitement, we see lots of people coming out to sell their cars. August especially is turning out to be much better. We see almost 15% growth in used car listings on Carwale.com this month itself, which will only improve."
He said the new car and used car enquiries are rising and will get better in September once the festive season begins. "We anticipate a growth of 15-20% in our business September onwards," he said.
Value of used cars dropped sharply as compared to last year due to which dealers were selling cars at lower valuation to get rid of the inventory pile-up.
"Even cars with great demand have been hit. A very few cars have remained unaffected, that's because of the long waiting period in new car market. Such cars include Maruti Suzuki's Swift Dzire, Swift Diesel, Ritz, Mahindra's Xylo and Skoda's Superb," Sharma said.
Monsoon is the good time to buy second-hand cars because the valuation is low during the period. "A two-year-old Hyundai Santro, which until three months back cost Rs 3 lakh, costs Rs 2.65 lakh. It will shoot back to its original level during the festive season, when the market will be back on the recovery path," he said.
S Saha, chief operating officer, First Choice, the used car retail business of M&M, said, "Since April we have seen a 60% growth and we hope to reach 100% growth by the end of the fiscal. There has been an increasing trend of people upgrading across segments, such as from A to B and B to C. As far as valuations are concerned, products by Honda and Hyundai have a high resale value."
But some products irrespective of the festive season fail to generate demand. Deepak Lakhani, assistant sales manager, Millennium Toyota, said, "Demand for Hyundai Accent, Getz is less and so is the case with the petrol variants of Tata Indigo, Indica and. All GM products are witnessing zero demand. Fiat's Palio and Mitsubishi Cedia, too, are tough products to sell," Lakhani said.
Jaspal Singh, owner of VM Motors, a used car retail outlet, said that petrol variants and multi-utility vehicles have not shown any uptick in demand.
