In India, SUVs are gaining popularity day by day. Currently, the most popular segment in India is the mid-size SUV segment. Many car manufacturing companies offer mid-size SUVs and recently, Toyota has also entered this segment with the new HyCross, thanks to this the competition in the Mid-Size SUV segment will increase this year (2023). Currently available options in the mid-size SUV segment in India are – Mahindra XUV700, Tata Harrier and Safari, MG Hector and Hector Plus, and the newly added Innova HyCross. They all compete with each other. However, there is no match for the Mahindra XUV700, which outsold all others in terms of sales last year (2022). The Mahindra XUV700 is available in five and seven-seat configurations. The Hector and Harrier have five seats, whereas the Hector Plus and Safari have the option of six and seven-seat configurations.
Mid-Size SUV sales in CY 2022 stood at 1,42,452 units. This includes 65,371 units of Mahindra XUV700, 54,450 units of Harrier and Safari combined, and 22,631 units of MG Hector and Hector Plus. By selling the highest number of units, Mahindra XUV700 has acquired 45.89 percent of the Mid-Size SUV market share in India. The average monthly sales of Mahindra XUV700 were 5,448 units. At the start of 2022, the sales of XUV700 were steadily increasing month by month, from Jan – Mar 2022 a total of 14,297 units of XUV700 were sold. 13,521 units of Harrier+Safari and 6,160 units of MG Hector/Hector Plus were sold in this same period.
In the April-June period of 2022, the sale of Mahindra and Tata grew. Mahindra sold a total of 15,585 units of XUV700 in this period and Tata sold 14,776 units of Harrier+Safari. The sales of MG dropped in this period, only 5,483 units of MG Hector/Hector Plus were sold in April-June. In the first half of 2022, a total of 69,822 units were sold out of which 29,882 units were of Mahindra XUV700, 28,297 units were of Harrier+Safari, and 11,643 units were of MG Hector/Hector Plus.
In July-Sep, Mahindra sold a total of 18,350 units of XUV700, Tata sold 11,699 units of Harrier+Safari, and MG sold a total of 6,010 units of MG Hector/Hector Plus. Thus, 38,814 units were sold in the Jul-Sep period. In the last 3 months (Oct-Dec) of 2022, 33,816 units of mid-size SUVs were sold out of which 17,139 units were of Mahindra XUV700, 11,699 units were of Tata Harrier+Safati, and 4,978 units were of MG Hector/Hector Plus. In the last 3 months of 2022, sales of their SUVs were lower compared to other months. But still, the second half of 2022 ended with sales of 72,630 units. With 35,489 units, the Mahindra XUV700 contributes nearly 50% of these sales.
