Toyota Kirloskar Motor recorded its highest sales in the last five years in December, with 12,747 units sold in the domestic market.
Also read: Toyota Innova Crysta, New Fortuner prices to go up soon
Riding on its new offerings, the Innova Crysta and the new Fortuner, Toyota sold a total of 14,093 units, registering a growth of 29 percent as compared to the same month last year. While the Innova Crysta witnessed growth of over 65 percent last month, the new Fortuner registered over 174 percent growth in December. Toyota Fortuner also reached the milestone of the sale of one lakh units in India in 2016.
In December this year, Toyota exported 1,346 units of the Etios series. The company had exported 441 units of the Etios series in December 2015. Although the numbers went up in December, Toyota said that number of walk-in visitors at the dealership and enquiries were impacted due to the demonetisation move in the past two months.
"December is usually a high selling month as most manufacturers try and liquidate the year end stocks and come up with schemes offering huge discounts on products," said N. Raja, director & senior vice president, sales & marketing, Toyota Kirloskar Motor. "In our case, we ensure a lean inventory at all times both on our side as well as the dealer and we have been able to maintain the same in the year end as well. This indicates the strong demand in the market for our products and especially the demand for the new Crysta and Fortuner which are new launches."
Meanwhile, the prices of Toyota's range of vehicles in the country will go up from January 2017 as there is an increase in the manufacturing cost. The hike will also affect the newly-launched models. While Toyota has not revealed the modelwise price details, it is said that the hike will be by up to 3 percent.