The cheers and jubilation of Mahindra & Mahindra along with Japanese car maker Nissan seems to have not caught up with the Korean automaker Hyundai Motors, the country’s second biggest car manufacturer. The Korean giant has posted a sharp dip in its sales fortunes to the tune of 17.7 percent. With the trend in the market been bullish in nature and the automotive companies starting the New Year on a high, the report of loss in demand seems gloomy for Hyundai Motors. Sales figure were down from 52,628 last year for the same month to 43,316 in January 2011.
Hyundai Motors in its press release revealed, despite the dip in sales, the domestic sales figures of the company has seen a marginal increase of 2.4 percent, with 30,306 units sold in January 2011, which is a tad higher from 29,601 vehicles sold for the same period in the previous year.
The Korean car maker is also the largest exporter of cars from India. This sector has taken a severe hit with a dip of 43.5 percent in overseas shipments. The figure was literally slashed to half from the previous year’s exports in January. The company gave the figures of January’s export which stood at 13,010 which is almost half of 23,027 for January 2010.
In the A3 segment (Verna and Accent) the company sold 3957 units while the sales figures for A2 (i10, i20 and Santro) stood at 39,343 units sold. In the segment of A5 (Sonata Transform) Hyundai Motors sold 11 and 5 units of its latest SUV Santa Fe in January 2011.
Mr. Arvind Saxena, Director-Marketing and Sales at Hyundai Motors India Ltd was quoted as saying that the company is on a steady growth path by riding high on the small cars, the domestic market will grow at a much lesser pace than last year and the growth rate for the company can come to a lowly 2-digit figure in the current year.
