Front runners in car segment race past 100,000 bookings
About a dozen new cars have been launched in the last 12 months, but four—C reta, Ba le no, Brezza and Kwid — have raced past the 100,000 bookings mark.
Together, these now account for 14 per cent of the sector’s total sales.
These also demonstrate how the sector has changed over the years. Not very long ago, even the most popular launches took 18 to 24 months to hit this milestone.
Young buyers willing to frequently replace older models with newer ones are boosting booking sand sales, according to experts. The market has also expanded.
This has also created exciting challenges for car makers.
When Hyundai launched its sports utility vehicle( SUV) C retain July last year, it had planned to produce 6,500 cars every month. Soon, however, it had to raise the rate of production to 7,500 units.
From January this year, the SUV is being produced at a monthly rate of 10,000 units. About 92,000 units have been delivered to domestic buyers.
“The market for cars is getting bigger every year. The sector doubles sales every six years,” said Rakesh Srivastava, senior vice-president (sales and marketing), Hyundai.
He added: “The customer confidence in certain brands is high. They don’t wait for review — hence, Creta and i20 Elite became instant hits.”
In July 2014, Hyundai’s Grand i10, a hatchback, clocked domestic sales of 100,000 units within 10 months of its launch. In June last year, the Elite i20 also hit sales of 100,000, again 10 months after its launch.
Of the four front runners now, two are from Maruti Suzuki, the largest car maker in the country. Its premium hatchback Baleno has got bookings for 121,000 units. About 75,000 units have been delivered to domestic buyers and many are in the queue.
China expanded efforts to steady the currency markets, with the central bank adding verbal support to the exchange rate after a week that saw it slip past a key level against the dollar.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will work hard to keep the yuan stable against a basket of currencies, Deputy Governor Chen Yulu said at a conference in Beijing on Sunday, adding that the authority will improve the policy framework for the yuan’s offshore market and cross-border services.
Chen’s comments come after the PBOC fuelled speculation that it was defending a level of 6.7 per dollar by strengthening its daily reference rate even as a gauge of the greenback rose.
This spurred speculation that the central bank isn’t sticking to its stated policy of following the direction of the market, which would have resulted in weaker fixings.
The signs of intervention come amid increasing pressure on the currency, with Goldman Sachs Group saying that the yuan’s declines affected sentiment and resulted in a significant pickup in outflows in June.
The threat of capital flight unsettling financial markets is complicating China’s strategy of steadily weakening the yuan to combat a drop in exports as it looks to support growth in the world’s secondlargest economy.
The yuan advanced 0.9 per cent, the most since October, against a 13-currency trade-weighted basket in the five days through 22 July.
The currency traded onshore posted its first weekly advance against the dollar since early June, recovering earlier losses after dropping beyond 6.7 against the dollar for the first time since 2010.