Kia Carens Sees High Demand In First Month Of Sales, Beats Maruti XL6 But Not Ertiga

Lately the Indian subsidiary of the South Korean automaker Kia has been on fire in the country as the carmaker recorded a high sales figure of 18,121 units in the last month of February 2022. Regarded as one of the fastest-growing automakers in the country right now, Kia sales registered an 8.5% YoY growth over the same period last year. The biggest contributor to this figure was the company’s compact SUV Seltos. However, the newest offering from the brand – the Carens MPV also proved itself to be a huge winner. The South Korean automaker took the entire nation by storm with the launch of its newest people carrier MPV Carens last month, and just in a span of 15 days, the three-row vehicle has attained a massive feat of garnering 5109 unit despatches.

Referred as the recreational vehicle by Kia, the Carens with its sale of 5109 units in last month has beaten the likes of Maruti’s premium MPV XL6. The country’s largest automaker Maruti sold a total of 3,304 units of the XL6 domestically, which was down by 1,805 units when compared to the Kia’s newest offering. Although Maruti did manage to beat the Korean carmakers Carens with its MPV Ertiga on which the XL6 is based. MSIL reported a total sales of 11,649 units of the Ertiga in February 2022 which compared to its last year’s tally of 9,774 units in the same month was up by 19.18 percent on a YoY basis.

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Myung-Sik Sohn, Chief Sales Officer, Kia India, while commenting on the achievement of the company’s developing sales said, “We are happy to sustain our positive sales momentum. We recently surpassed the half-million mark in less than 2.5 years, which gives us great confidence in our vision and products for the Indian market. With the launch of Carens, we are looking forward to reaching new heights and strengthening our position in India. Owing to the recently started third shift at our Anantapur plant, we aim to reduce wait times for all our models. However, the semiconductor shortage remains a concern for us, similar to the rest of the carmakers globally. We are hopeful for some improvement in the supply chain constraints from Q2 onwards.”

The Carens even before its launch in the country received an astonishing 19,000 pre-booking orders. And according to reports from a media outlet the company has received more than 30,000 Kia Carens bookings in India so far. Additionally, Kia India also recently announced that its production plant in Ananthpur, Andhra Pradesh, has begun the third shift to increase the production output of the company. Kia expects its car sales in India to expand at nearly 3X the rate of global car sales in 2022, thanks to strong demand for Kia automobiles and new product releases.

Recently Kia India also made an announcement of the company reaching the colossal milestone of producing 5 lakh cars in the country. Kia sold over 4 lakh of the total produced cars in India itself and exported the rest of the 1 lakh cars to 91 different countries.

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