Dealer-level offers are ranging from around ₹50,000 to ₹3.35 lakh across several mass-market models.
Som Kapoor, partner and future of mobility leader, EY-Parthenon, said discounts on some models had reached ₹5 lakh-10 lakh last year, as against around ₹3 lakh now.
The inventory increase comes as manufacturers’ wholesale volumes grew 36.5 per cent year-on-year in August, more than twice the 16.14 per cent growth in retail registration.
The August data with Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) showed PV wholesale volumes at 439,309 units, significantly ahead of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations’ (Fada’s) retail registration of 402,398 units.
The nearly 37,000-unit gap, coupled with the increase in dealer inventories, points to a sizeable amount of stock moving into the channel ahead of the festival season.
Fada’s data of inventories at — 38-40 days at the end of August — is well above the association’s recommended 21-day level. About 56 per cent of dealers reported higher inventories.
The buildup, however, is not uniform across manufacturers.
Maruti Suzuki, the country’s largest PV manufacturer, had around 16 days of network inventories, according to Partho Banerjee, senior executive officer, marketing and sales. This is below the company’s preferred festival inventories of around 30 days. The company has also received more than 60,000 bookings for its Victoris, indicating that stock availability remains a constraint for some products.
Hyundai Motor India’s inventories stood at four to five weeks, which Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Tarun Garg described as healthy.
The company has been maintaining a disciplined approach to discount, whose rate is 2.8 per cent of revenue in the first quarter, broadly in line with the previous year.
At industry level, available dealer-sourced offers also do not point to a uniform escalation in discounts.
Tata Motors has benefits of up to ₹3.35 lakh on select Curvv electric-vehicle variants and up to ₹2.75 lakh on the Harrier EV, while for Mahindra & Mahindra those are up to ₹2.5 lakh on select sport utility vehicles.
Maruti Suzuki’s Grand Vitara carries headline benefits of up to ₹3.10 lakh, including a zero-road-tax benefit of up to ₹1.85 lakh.
Hyundai’s Creta has benefits of up to ₹1 lakh, while Kia’s offers range from ₹50,000 on the Sonet to ₹1.5 lakh on the Carnival. Honda’s Elevate has benefits of around ₹2.44 lakh. These are dealer-sourced figures and can vary by location, variant, model year, stock and customer eligibility.
Kapoor attributed the moderation in discounts from last year to a tighter demand-supply balance. The comparison, however, is based on his talks with original equipment manufacturers rather than an industrywide discount series.
The key test now is whether the elevated inventories can be absorbed through retail demand in the festival season without a broadbased increase in incentives.
Fada’s survey showed 81.62 per cent of dealers expected growth during September-November, although this was lower than the 87.85 per cent a month earlier.
The relatively strong expectations come against a high base. Siam has attributed part of August’s wholesale growth to the lower base of the previous year, while Fada has flagged risks such as weaker than expected demand, a deficient monsoon in several states, and price increases.
