The passenger vehicle industry in India has registered a 5% growth in August 2015, as a result of positive changes in vehicles sales. The major four car models that contributed to the growth are Honda Jazz, Hyundai Creta, Maruti S-Cross and Ford Aspire. The new launches accounted 22,600 units of the total production. In fact, barring these vehicles, the industry has actually shown a 5.6% drop in sales.

The passenger vehicle market reported sales of 2,23,502 units in August 2015, which is 4.9% higher over the corresponding period in 2014.

While 7,437 units of Hyundai Creta were sold, Honda managed to sell 5,400 units of Jazz. Ford took the third sport with 5,176 units of Aspire, whereas Suzuki sold 4,602 units of S-Cross.

Growth driven by new-launches cannot be considered gradual growth. Vehicle marketers are, therefore, looking at ways to tap new markets with their existing products, including rural markets and taxi segments.

Car marketers are looking at new growth opportunities for their existing models, Economic Times reports. "Tata Motors is aggressively expanding into rural markets where we grew 20 per cent in August," said Mayank Pareek, president, passenger vehicles business unit, Tata Motors. "India has 7,986 towns with more than 75,000 population and we want to target all of them."

India's second largest car maker, Hyundai, also announced a change in strategy. Hyundai is looking at fleet customers. "In a slowdown, existing segments actually face challenges, so the way to gain or hold volumes is by way of newer markets. We are focusing on fleet sales for the i10 for example, and we are targeting rural markets with the Eon, i10 and Grand" Rakesh Srivastava, senior VP (sales and marketing), Hyundai Motor India told Economic times.

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