
New Delhi: Maruti Suzuki India on Thursday said its retail sales have touched 75,000 units since the start of Navratra, boosted by strong festive demand and the government’s GST 2.0 rate reduction, as per PTI.
“Today up to 6 pm, after the start of the Navratra, our retails have touched 75,000 vehicles. We are expecting this will cross 80,000 units by the end of the day,” Maruti Suzuki India Senior Executive Officer (Marketing & Sales) Partho Banerjee told reporters.
A massive boom
The country’s largest carmaker is currently receiving around 80,000 customer inquiries per day, almost double the usual 40,000-45,000 daily inquiries. It is also clocking close to 18,000 bookings per day, Banerjee said. He added that the surge in demand is most visible in the entry-level car segment, where all-India bookings are up by 50 per cent, while growth in smaller towns beyond the top 100 cities has touched 100 per cent.
Banerjee noted that some popular models such as the Brezza, Dzire and Baleno are witnessing exceptionally high demand. “For certain variants, we may not be able to supply after four to five days,” he said, urging customers to complete financing formalities quickly to take deliveries during the festive period.
Lauding the GST rate reduction, he said, “Customers were just waiting for it and this is a golden opportunity for them to upgrade.”
The GST 2.0 regime, effective from Monday, reduced GST on vehicles to 18 per cent and 40 per cent, compared with earlier slabs of 28-31 per cent and 43-50 per cent.
Earlier this week, Maruti Suzuki had reported 30,000 retail sales on the first day of the new GST regime.