With the gradual unlock being announced in May 2020 in several parts of the country, the company restarted its factory operations in Bidadi and subsequently started catering to the pending customer orders that had accumulated over the past few months. With lockdown regulations being relaxed in several parts of the country and with demand picking up in the market, Toyota dealers were able to mostly sell vehicles to customers from their held inventory in May 2020 thereby ensuring a lean inventory at the dealership by the end of May.
Commenting on the June numbers, Naveen Soni, senior vice-president (Sales & Service), TKM said, “With demand gradually coming back in the market and with strong support from our dealer partners as well as the hard work of our SBUs (Strategic Business Units), we have been able to keep up with customer expectations. Thanks to our special financing offers and buyback offers which has also helped bring customers back to dealerships. Our retails (sales from dealers to customers) is nearly double of wholesales (sales from TKM to dealers) second month in a row thereby bringing down our dealers inventory carrying cost by more than 50 percent over the past two months. We are also seeing a visible growth in online enquiries as well as bookings.
“Post Covid, the market has been showing a shift towards entry-level suffix in all products that we sell and we are monitoring such trends and adjusting our future production according to market demand based on Toyota Pull System, which supplies vehicles to dealers when it is required, where it is required and how much is required. Our production side has been helping us ramp production to be able to meet customer requirements. Going forward, we would like to focus on ramping up production while placing the highest priority to the safety and well-being of all stakeholders and by adopting the ‘Safety and Health First’ approach at all times.”
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