Passenger-car registrations fell sharply during Navratri against a strong 2024 base, but rising bookings, showroom visits and automaker deliveries point to a potential Diwali sales rebound.
India’s festive car market is sending mixed signals: retail registrations during Navratri were lower than a year earlier, yet automakers say their order books remain healthy and showroom traffic has held up well. The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations said passenger-vehicle registrations fell 21.9% year on year during the nine-day festival period from October 11 to 20, even as overall vehicle retail sales stayed above last year’s level. Much of the comparison is distorted by the unusually strong base set in 2024, when the Navratri period was longer and coincided with the rollout of GST 2.0, which pulled demand forward.
That backdrop has not stopped Maruti Suzuki from seeing a swelling pipeline of orders. Partho Banerjee, the company’s senior executive officer for marketing and sales, told PTI that pending bookings had risen from about 200,000 at the start of October to 270,000 after Dussehra. Banerjee said the company was working to maximise deliveries, and added that sales between Onam and Dussehra were up about 30% from a year earlier, while the stretch from Ganesh Chaturthi to Dussehra rose 35%. He said small cars were up about 16% to 17% over that period and SUV volumes roughly doubled as supplies improved for the Victoris and Brezza.
Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles is also reporting brisk festive demand. According to Financial Express, the carmaker delivered more than 50,000 vehicles during Navratri, including more than 10,000 on Dussehra alone, and is now increasing production while tightening logistics to keep popular models on dealer forecourts ahead of Diwali. Amit Kamat, the company’s chief commercial officer, said better consumer sentiment was showing up in more showroom visits, enquiries, bookings and deliveries across its cars and sport utility vehicles. Hyundai Motor India has reported similar momentum, with managing director and chief executive Tarun Garg saying registrations during Shradh and Navratri were up 30% from a year earlier to nearly 41,000 units.
For the industry, the crucial question is now how much of this demand converts into actual deliveries between Dhanteras and Diwali. Maruti says Navratri deliveries were close to last year’s level, suggesting the festival season is shaping up unevenly rather than uniformly strong. Even so, the company expects double-digit growth across the broader festive period, while Hyundai says the current pace should carry through the final buying rush. With registrations softer than the headlines around bookings suggest, the coming days will determine whether India’s carmakers finish the season with merely decent results or another bout of festive strength.
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