Pandemic impacts auto industry, sales dip in Sept quarter

The fleet segment sales have fallen during the period under review as people were opting for personal mobility options at the cost of shared and public transport to maintain distance in the times of the pandemic.

“There has been extreme aversion on the part of customers against shared mobility and public transport and they are looking at personal transport. If we look at the figures in our portfolio, fleet sales which include shared mobility, in the second quarter there was a drop of 69 per cent,” Maruti Suzuki India ED (Sales and Marketing) Shashank Srivastava said.

Taking into consideration the April-September period, the drop in fleet sales is 77 per cent as compared with last year, he added.

“As a result in our portfolio, fleet sales which stood at 7 per cent last year (contribution to total sales) have fallen to 2.4 per cent this year,” Srivastava said. The auto major offers Tour range of variants across hatchback, sedan, van and MPV segments for commercial use in models like Alto, WagonR, Celerio, Eeco, TourS and Ertiga.