As the small car segment continues to witness gradual decline with affordability factor coming into play, Maruti Suzuki India on Monday called for incentives to spur the sales. Entry cars priced below Rs 5 lakh, which used to be around a million units (9,34,538 units) in FY16, have declined to just 25,402 units in FY25 and accounting for less than 30% at present.

Sales of models like Alto and S-Presso decline to 6,776 units in May as against 9,902 units in the same month last year. Even the sales of compact cars, including Baleno, Celerio, Dzire, Ignis, Swift, and WagonR, fell to 61,502 units as compared to 68,206 units in May 2024.

Maruti Suzuki India Senior Executive Officer (Marketing & Sales) Partho Banerjee told reporters in a virtual press conference that with enhanced regulation, prices of small car models have increased significantly impacting the buyers who want to upgrade from two-wheelers to entry level cars.

“So somewhere the government has to understand that if they want to fuel the growth of the auto industry, they need to understand where the problem is and how to increase the size of the pie (small car sales),” he noted. ”Some incentives are required so that the customer who is not able to afford the car can come in and can migrate to a four-wheeler from a two-wheeler,” as quoted by news agency