Maruti Suzuki passed a milestone in May when it became the first Indian carmaker

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to sell one lakh vehicles in a month, fuelled by soaring demand for Alto and Swift hatchbacks and the refurbished WagonR during the marriage season, especially in the north.

With a sales figure of 102,175, India’s largest carmaker is far ahead of rivals Hyundai Motor and Tata Motors, which sold 46,808 and 23,489 cars, respectively, during the month. The company had sold 79,782 cars in May 2009.

“Our newer models have done exceedingly well with Alto at about 25,000 units, followed by Swift. The big towns have also surprisingly sprung up 25 per cent growth in May. Marriage season, especially in the north, also escalated demand by 3-4 per cent,” said Mayank Pareek, managing executive officer for marketing and sales at Maruti Suzuki India.

To meet the rising demand the company has ramped up production, which Pareek said was achieved through rationalisation and by removing bottlenecks.

“Maruti has increased its production level from 96,000-97,000 a month to more than 100,000, which will help reduce waiting periods for its cars. The new WagonR and Eeco MPV have helped them gain market share in May,” said Vaishali Jajoo, a senior research analyst at Angel Broking.

Tata Motors, India’s largest automaker by revenue, sold 56,779 vehicles in May, including 3,550 Nanos, compared with 40,196 a year ago.

“Jaguar Land Rover sales are continuing the upward trend since launch in June 2009,” the company said in a statement.

But both Hyundai Motor and General Motors failed to match their sales figures in April. While Hyundai sold 27,151 cars in May, down 5 per cent from its April figure of 28,501, GM sold only 8,221 cars in May compared with 10,601 in the previous month, a fall of 22 per cent.

Analysts say even prices played a role in boosting Maruti’s sales. While the industry in general raised car prices by 4-5 per cent this year, Maruti limited it to about 2 per cent.

“The price rise by Maruti Suzuki is not as high as done by its peers, which maybe the reason for higher sales in comparison,” said Supriya Madye Khedkar, an auto analyst at ICICI Securities.

“Although the market continues to grow, we were constrained by our planned annual maintenance shutdown, which restricted our numbers as we had to divert our export production to meet the demand from the domestic market,” said Arvind Saxena, director of marketing and sales at Hyundai Motor India.

He said demand soared as much as 35 per cent for the i20 hatchback in May with the introduction of two new variants and a lower priced variant.

The Indian two-wheeler market also saw a sales boom in May. Hero Honda Motors, the world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer by sales, saw sales rising by 14 per cent to 435,933, the highest monthly volume in the company’s history.

“Refreshed models of Glamour and Glamour FI, introduced in April, have proved to be a great success in the deluxe segment, further contributing to our phenomenal numbers,” said Anil Dua, senior vice-president of marketing, sales and customer care at Hero Honda.

Sales at Bajaj Auto, the country’s second largest two-wheeler maker, also soared 62 per cent to 299,442 units, the company’s best figures for May. The company sold 12,377 Discover 150 cc bikes in the first month of its launch, mainly in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

saahilanant@mydigitalfc.com