Toyota Gains Traction In Feb 2022: Registers 19% Growth

However, last year in February 2021, the company registered 14,075 unit sales despite the pandemic-related business constraints. Crunching the numbers, we can see that the Y-o-Y sales performance of Toyota has gone down by almost 38 per cent.

However, despite many odds, Toyota performed well in December 2021 by registering 10,832 unit sales.

Expressing his views on the sales performance of the company, Mr. Atul Sood, Associate Vice President, Sales and Strategic Marketing, Toyota Kirloskar Motors, said, "First of all, we would like to thank all our customers for the overwhelming response that the new Camry Hybrid has received, as we have very promising booking orders for the new Camry Hybrid. Similarly, the overall sentiment in the market continues to remain positive as we witness a steady surge in demand trends. This has also led to a consistent rise in order bookings, especially for the Innova Crysta as well as the Fortuner and as a next step, we are looking forward to cater to the pending orders on our side",

One of the reasons for Toyota's sales slump could be credited to the brand's lack of budget models. Other than the Toyota Glanza and Toyota Urban Cruiser, the Japanese brand does not have any other models under the '10 lakh' price bracket.

Moreover, the two models under the '10 lakh' price bracket that Toyota currently in India is rebadged versions of the Maruti Suzuki Baleno and Maruti Suzuki Brezza. This is a less than ideal product strategy to improve sales in the Indian market, where a majority of customers are very sensitive to pricing.

Despite these issues, it is the Toyota Urban Cruiser and Toyota Glanza that help the Japanese brand achieve respectable sales volumes in India, whereas the Toyota Innova Crysta and the Toyota Fortuner remain consistent performers for the Japanese brand in the country.

In fact, a majority of first time Toyota customers in India opt for either the Toyota Glanza or Toyota Urban Cruiser, Moreover, a large chunk of these first-time Toyota buyers belong to tier 1 and tier 2 cities in the country.

One of the core reasons to attract young buyers to the Toyota brand is by offering specially created value-added service programs such as Express Maintenance 60, Q Service, Extended Warranty & Service Packages for its buyers.

Despite all these, we believe the second-quarter performance for Toyota could improve as Toyota will be launching the much-awaited Toyota Hilux pickup SUV and the heavily updated Toyota Glanza in India.

Thoughts About Toyota In India

Though Toyota has been very successful in India, the recent trajectory of the Japanese brand does not inspire much confidence. However, we still believe the Japanese brand could turn the tides and be on course to a great recovery.