Sudhir Gharpure and his sales team sat chatting at a big Maruti Suzuki dealership on the outskirts of Mumbai some two hours after its doors were opened on a recent Saturday morning — not a single customer was in sight.
"There used to be close to 15-20 bookings each day, but now we're down to 3-5 on good days," said Gharpure, the general manager at the dealership.
Gharpure's experience is not an isolated one. Across India dealerships are being pushed out of business and the Indian auto sector is going through its biggest slump in nearly two decades. Passenger vehicle sales fell for eight straight months until June, and in May sales dropped 20.55 percent — the sharpest recorded fall in 18 years.