Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Sees Double-Digit Sales Growth In 2026, Riding On SUVs: CEO
Elaborating on the company's bullish outlook, he said supplies are going to start this month for at least three products, including the new Punch, Sierra, as well as Safari and Harrier petrol.
Passenger vehicle sales in India are expected to grow around 10% in 2026, extending momentum from GST rate cuts, with SUVs likely to witness accelerated demand, according to Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd. MD and CEO Shailesh Chandra.
The company, which on Tuesday launched the updated version of its compact SUV Punch with prices starting at Rs 5.59 lakh, is looking to outperform the industry growth this calendar year with a slew of launches lined up, besides the full-year sales impact of models like the Sierra, and petrol variants of Safari and Harrier SUVs, Chandra told PTI in an interview.
'The first eight months of 2025 were a decline for the industry (passenger vehicles), whereas post GST (reforms), it has been upwards of 20% growth. Even December was very strong. I hope January will be even stronger. So we are seeing that for four or five months these growth rates are sustaining in double digits,' he said.
Chandra further said, 'Even if it stabilises a bit going forward, I feel quite optimistic that the industry has the ability to grow in double digit, 10% plus minus two...'
He was responding to a query on the outlook for 2026 for passenger vehicle sales in India.
When asked about the growth outlook for Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles in 2026, Chandra said, 'As far as Tata Motors is concerned, this is an intense (product) launch calendar (year) for us. I believe that we will be doing industry-beating growth.'
Elaborating on the company's bullish outlook, he said supplies are going to start this month for at least three products, including the new Punch, Sierra, as well as Safari and Harrier petrol.
'Then there are a slew of launches in this calendar year, so we would have a strong industry-beating growth,' Chandra asserted, adding, 'After having ranked number two in quarter three of this financial year (in the last quarter of the calendar year 2025), we became ranked number two in VAHAN. So we have exited (2025) well.'
Commenting on demand trends in the PV market, he said post GST 2.0, SUVs have further grown better than cars. A lot of SUV sub-segments are doing well, including the mid-size SUV, compact SUV, and the sub-compact SUV segment, and these have driven the growth of the PV industry.
'So all three cylinders in the SUV segment are doing well,' Chandra said, adding that the segment in which Punch operates would also see accelerated growth.
'This product (new Punch) will have the potential of definitely improving our sales, as well as expanding the pie for the sub-compact SUV segment,' he said, adding that the sub-compact SUV segment has been the biggest beneficiary of GST 2.0.
'Post-GST 2.0, this segment has significantly picked up with the kind of price reduction that happened on the back of GST reduction by 10 per cent. Therefore, growth has tremendously come back in the segment, to the extent of nearly 70% to 80% in Punch sales. Whereas before GST (reduction), this segment and the whole entry segment were declining more than the average decline of the industry,' Chandra noted.
The sub-compact SUV segment, where Punch competes with the likes of Hyundai Exter and Skoda Kylaq, is currently witnessing cumulative monthly sales of about 40,000 units.
'This segment has the potential to continue to expand... At one stage, it would have been 20,000 (units per month), which went to 30,000 and now 40,000. I clearly see that on one hand, the industry will grow faster than what we had been seeing last year,' he said, when asked if the sub-compact SUV segment can reach up to a total of 50,000 units a month.
With the new Punch coming with a strengthened value proposition, freshness, and contemporariness, along with more powertrain options, Chandra expressed confidence that the models 'will be a winner in the market'.
