Hyundai India set for SUVs accounting over 60% of sales in 2023: COO Garg

Hyundai Motor India Ltd is on track to achieving 60 per cent of its total domestic sales from SUVs this year with models like Creta and the newly launched Exter accelerating the growth, according to company COO Tarun Garg.

With exports accelerating in the last three months, the company is also confident of sustaining its overseas shipments momentum despite concerns over global geopolitical situation.

"We will end up with more than 60 per cent at the end of the year which is what we said at the beginning of the year...We are now almost reaching there," Garg told PTI.

He was responding to a query on how much would SUVs contribute to the company's overall sales considering the traction its models have witnessed in the market.

He further said,"For us the good thing has been that SUV contribution has moved to 63 per cent in October and year-to-date at 59 per cent as against industry SUV percentage of 48 per cent. So that has really helped us to outperform the industry in terms of January to October numbers."

Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) clocked total sales of 68,728 units in October 2023 as compared to 58,006 units in the same month a year ago, a growth of 18.48 per cent.

In the January-October period this year, total sales stood at 643,535 units as against 578,956 units in the year-ago months , a growth of 11.15 per cent.

In the domestic market, sales during the period were at 509,910 units as compared to 465,678 units in the corresponding period last year, up 9.49 per cent.

At the beginning of 2023, Garg said the contribution of SUVs to the company's total sales was 53 per cent. Explaining reasons behind the growth of HMIL's SUV sales, he said,"The Creta continues to be an outperformer.With the year-till-date growth of 16 per cent it maintains the segment leadership. Also, Exter is doing very well."

Hyundai Creta competes with the likes of Kia Seltos, Maruti Suzuki's Grand Vitara, among others in the Indian passenger vehicle market. On the exports front, Garg said the company is also on track to meeting its target of 160,000 units for the year with the last "two to three" months turning out to be good.

"From July, we have been able to increase our capacity by about 4,000 units a month and that gives us some leeway in terms of managing domestic and exports demand," he said, adding the company has been able to fulfill "backorders" in this quarter for exports.

Another factor for increase in exports is that the "Latin American markets have been doing quite well and that has really helped us to put in very healthy export numbers," Garg said.

He, however, acknowledged that there are concerns over the global geopolitical developments, specially in Israel and the Middle East.

"We are keeping our fingers crossed but as of now the order inflow has been reasonably okay," Garg said, adding the supply flexibility has helped HMIL export more in the last three months.