Following Toyota India’s recent announcement of a new marketing push in rural areas, Hyundai Motor India said rural sales accounted for 20% of its tally for August 2014, compared with 12% in 2011.

Hyundai’s marketing and sales chief Rakesh Srivastava told the Financial Express: “When there was no growth in the urban markets, we were deriving comfort from our rural presence and it compensated for the drop in numbers in bigger cities. Overall, while it compensated for the losses there, it also helped us increase our market share. We see future growth coming from these (rural) markets.”

In the next few years, the company aims for 30% of its total sales to come from rural markets.

Meanwhile, Hyundai plans to launch one product each in the Indian compact SUV and multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) segments over the coming two years.

Srivastava said, “We are seeing that growth in SUV and MPV segment is happening in the compact space. We will come up with a product in them as they are high volume and high growth segments and we do not have presence there.”

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