Hyundai, along with Kia, has able to surpass the monthly sales volume of Maruti Suzuki in May this year
The ongoing second wave of the pandemic has probably caused more loss of lives and livelihood than the first wave that hit last year. This has also affected businesses across all sectors adversely. Despite the unprecedented rise in Covid-19 infectors in the past two months, automotive OEMs performed better in terms of sales when compared to last year.
For the first time in India’s automobile history, Hyundai and its sister brand Kia have been able to beat market leader Maruti Suzuki in monthly sales figures of May 2021. The cumulative sales volume of the South Korean brands has surpassed the figures registered by the Indo-Japanese carmaker.
Hyundai-Kia beat Maruti Suzuki
The Korean duo recorded a sales volume of 36,051 units whereas Maruti Suzuki registered sales of 32,903 units in May this year, therefore, bettering the latter by more than 3000 units. In May last year, these figures stood at 8,544 units and 13,702 units for the Korean and Japanese brands respectively. Therefore, it has resulted in impressive YoY growth figures of 322 percent and 140 percent for both auto houses respectively.
In April this year, Hyundai and Kia managed to retail 65,113 units whereas Maruti Suzuki registered a sales volume of 1,35,879 units. This resulted in a massive decline in MoM figures of 45 percent and 76 percent.
Hyundai and Kia also recorded a cumulative market share (MS) of 34.94 percent last month, greater than 22.72 percent MS registered in April this year. For Maruti, MS stood at 31.89 percent which is a significant drop from 47.41 percent in April 2021.
It should be pointed out that Maruti Suzuki had its manufacturing plants shut down for a longer period of time. The company had announced the closure of plants in order to help divert the oxygen for medical purposes since the demand for oxygen cylinders across the country had increased quite a few notches during the last couple of months.
Hyundai & Kia Partnership
Hyundai and Kia belong to the same auto family. They have been under the same conglomerate ever since Kia filed for bankruptcy back in 1997. Hyundai purchased a huge share of Kia which got the latter back on its feet. To date, Hyundai Motor Company owns the majority of stakes in Kia Motor Corporation. In return, Kia also has acquired shares of different Hyundai Motor subsidiaries.
Both manufacturers maintain different brand identities and philosophies. At the same time, they cooperate on different levels when it comes to development of different technology. As sister companies, both Hyundai and Kia work together, but under separate brand entities. In India, Hyundai entered the market more than two decades earlier than Kia. However, Kia compensated for it with a stellar debut in the form of Seltos.
