Honda Cars nudges ahead of Mahindra & Mahindra in July sales, for FY-16 cumulative sales, Mahindra still leads

Honda Cars India has pipped Mahindra & Mahindra by snaring the third position in the Indian passenger vehicle market.
Mahindra & Mahindra which maintained the lead for the first two months of this fiscal year has seen its volumes slip a bit in June and July, as new launches of Mobilio and Jazz helped Honda Cars India to pip Mahindra in monthly sales for the last months (see table)

While Mahindra & Mahindra averaged little over 18,000 units in April and May, Honda Cars India was busy re-engineering its factory to create space for its new Jazz. With fresh capacity coming in, incremental volumes of Jazz helped Honda Cars India to scale up its volumes to 18,380 units in June and 18,606 units in July ahead of Mahindra, which sold 15,880 units and 14,556 units respectively in June and July.

Jnaneswar Sen, Sr. VP – marketing & sales, Honda Cars India Ltd. said, “We are extremely delighted to receive a great consumer response for all new Jazz. We would like to thank our customers for the continuous support to all our models and are confident that we will continue to do well in respective segments.”

However Mahindra still enjoys a slender lead of 3732 over Honda Cars India in terms of cumulative sales. While Honda has been aided by its new models Mobilio and Jazz, Mahindra & Mahindra's big bang model launches the U301 or TUV 3OO and the micro SUV S101 is likely to play in the coming few months.

Pravin Shah, president & chief executive (Automotive), M&M said, “While the auto industry is currently seeing muted growth, we do believe that the launch of some exciting new products will help it turn the tide. In addition, with the advent of a good monsoon till date and reduction in fuel prices, we expect sentiments to improve, leading to overall growth in auto sales. At Mahindra we continue to be excited with our portfolio of products as well as our upcoming launches."