How Tata and Mahindra broke India’s car duopoly

For two decades, India’s passenger-car market operated on a simple formula: Maruti Suzuki held roughly half the showroom floor, and Hyundai competed for what was left. The registration data from the past five years describes a market whose structure has broken open. Maruti remains the largest maker by a wide margin, but Tata Motors and Mahindra have expanded into a combined 27% share, fundamentally altering how cars are designed, priced, and sold.

The scale of the change is documented in Vahan’s all-India Motor Car registration records. In 2020, Tata and Mahindra together accounted for 12.4% of new car registrations. By 2025, that figure had climbed to 27.4%, while Hyundai drifted down from nearly 18% to under 13%. [1]

01A 4-million-car market changes hands

This shift unfolded inside a rapid post-pandemic volume expansion rather than an incumbent collapse. Overall car registrations climbed from 2.38 million in 2020 to 4.27 million in 2025. Maruti actually registered 440,000 more cars in 2025 than it did five years earlier, but because the broader market expanded so much faster, its share fell by 11.3 percentage points to 37.6%. Tata and Mahindra did not merely fight for a static slice; they captured the majority of new buyers entering the market. [1]

small cars used to be the bread and butter (but) I am afraid, the butter has gone away, now it's only bread. There's no butter left in the small car market anymore... We were essentially a small car manufacturer and we have to now adjust to the fact that because of regulatory and other factors small cars are coming down and the basket for the SUVs is going up.

RC Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki

The migration away from entry hatchbacks created a fundamental opening. First-time buyers who once started in small cars began moving straight into sub-four-metre SUVs and crossovers. As Tarun Garg, Chief Operating Officer of Hyundai Motor India, observed of the changing retail pattern: “A clearly visible trend is that first-time buyers are clearly shifting from hatchbacks to SUVs. The market is moving towards bigger and premium cars.” [7]

02The product offensives that built 27%

Tata Motors built its momentum by rewriting customer priorities around design, safety, and powertrain choice. The turnaround began with the Nexon, which in 2018 became India’s first car to achieve a five-star Global NCAP crash rating, elevating safety into a primary buying criterion in mass segments. In January 2020, the Nexon EV established an early lead in personal electric mobility, giving Tata an early green-mobility halo. [2, 3]

Tata scaled that proposition with the Punch micro-SUV in late 2021. Offering the model in petrol, twin-cylinder iCNG that preserved boot space, and battery-electric forms, the Punch became one of the fastest nameplates in Indian history to cross 400,000 sales. Managing Director Shailesh Chandra credited this flexible architecture for sustaining growth across segments: “The response to the new avatars of Tiago and Punch have been overwhelming with bookings surging across powertrains, reaffirming the strength of our multi-powertrain strategy.” By FY25, alternative powertrains (CNG and EVs) made up 36% of Tata’s passenger-vehicle volume. [2]

The response to the new avatars of Tiago and Punch have been overwhelming with bookings surging across powertrains, reaffirming the strength of our multi-powertrain strategy.

Shailesh Chandra, Managing Director, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles

Mahindra & Mahindra’s climb from 5.3% in 2020 to 13.8% in 2025 followed a sharp strategic reset. In early 2021, under Group CEO Dr. Anish Shah and Auto Sector head Rajesh Jejurikar, the company terminated its proposed joint venture with Ford and exited loss-making international ventures. The mandate was to reallocate capital exclusively toward core, authentic SUVs. As Shah framed the discipline: management bandwidth and capital are finite, and “spread too thin, both profits and priorities suffer.” [4, 8]

What followed was a consecutive wave of blockbuster launches. The second-generation Thar in October 2020 transformed a niche off-roader into an aspirational lifestyle brand. The XUV700 in August 2021 brought Level 2 ADAS and digital cockpits into the ₹15 to ₹25 lakh bracket, racking up over 100,000 bookings. In June 2022, the Scorpio-N generated 100,000 bookings in just 30 minutes, representing over ₹18,000 crore ($2.2 billion) in customer orders. The cadence continued in 2024 with the tech-heavy XUV 3XO and the five-door Thar ROXX. [4]

We are seeing strong demand across our SUV portfolio, and our focus is on building capacity to meet this demand while maintaining segment-wise value leadership.

Rajesh Jejurikar, Executive Director & CEO (Auto and Farm Sector), Mahindra & Mahindra

To convert demand into registrations, Mahindra expanded its monthly utility-vehicle production capacity from under 20,000 units in FY21 to over 49,000 units by FY25, targeting 85,000 units by FY27. Because of its premium SUV mix and high average selling prices, Mahindra captured the No. 1 revenue market share in India's SUV segment at 22.5% in FY25, demonstrating that domestic scale was as profitable as it was voluminous. [4, 8]

03Hyundai and the contested centre

Hyundai registered 420,977 Motor Cars in 2020 and 547,113 in 2025. Its volume grew, but its market share slipped from 17.7% to 12.8%—and to 11.7% in the first half of 2026. Hyundai did not miss the SUV shift; its own annual reports confirm that SUVs made up 68.5% of its domestic deliveries, led by the Creta and Venue. But with Tata and Mahindra attacking above and below, Hyundai found its middle-market stronghold caught in crossfire. [5, 7]

The rest of the field was similarly divided. Toyota expanded its share from 2.8% in 2020 to 7.1% in 2025, buoyed by hybrid models and badge-sharing with Maruti, while Kia held around 6%. Meanwhile, Škoda Auto India delivered record volumes in 2025, climbing 107% to 72,665 cars after launching the sub-four-metre Kylaq SUV. Petr Janeba, Škoda’s India brand director, described the model as a bid to “democratise European technology on Indian roads.” Yet while single models created regional spikes, none matched the sustained, multi-segment manufacturing scale of the domestic leaders. [6]

04A permanent structural realignment

The rise of Tata and Mahindra is not a cyclical anomaly. It reflects a permanent change in how Indian car buyers evaluate value. Where purchase decisions were once dominated purely by fuel economy and resale value—Maruti’s traditional fortress—buyers now demand crash test ratings, modern infotainment, ADAS features, and flexible powertrain choices ranging from CNG to electric. [1]

Maruti remains India's largest automaker by a wide margin, but it no longer dictates the terms of the market alone. Tata and Mahindra have established domestic engineering credibility and manufacturing scale, turning India’s passenger-car market from a predictable duopoly into a fiercely contested three-maker contest.