For the first time in the history of automobile sector, not a single car was sold by any company in April 2020 in Northeast India.
Car dealers in the northeast, and especially in the cities of Guwahati and Shillong, are always under pressure from customers to supply vehicles on time.
Customers in almost all the states in northeast have great fascination for cars, and there is beeline every day in almost all the dealers.
But, April 2020 is the first month in the region’s automobile history that not a single vehicle was sold to any customer.
“This is the worst month in my 10 years-long sales career,” a sales manager at a Maruti dealer at Guwahati, said, adding that they could not sell a single unit during the month of April.
While COVID19 was spreading its tentacles around India, even the month of March was bad for the car dealers of northeast.
“We don’t know when the government is going to lift the lockdown. But, even after the lifting of lockdown, the market will continue to be lackluster,” a sales executive with a Hyundai showroom in Guwahati, said.
Most of the dealers in Assam could not meet the targets for 2019-2020 set by the car manufacturers.
“We suffered a big blow during the anti-CAA protests in the month of December. And COVID19 pandemic was the last nail into the coffin,” owner of a Maruti dealership in Guwahati, said.
The car dealers are of the opinion that the two phases of lockdown has totally devastated the economic backbone of the country, and northeast is one of the worst sufferers.
“It is going to take months for the market to revive. We don’t know how long we can sustain the business like this,” one of them said.
Sales graph of April was down right at the bottom for all the car manufacturers in the northeast.