Navratri brings home the cars: From Cars24 to Spinny sees record demand with 2,120 cars deliveries

Cars24 delivered 750 used cars on the first day of Navratri, October 11, recording a 58 per cent year-on-year jump in deliveries. The volume was five times the company’s usual Sunday level, reflecting strong festive-season demand from first-time buyers and smaller-town customers, cited by Business Standard.

The used-car platform said the opening day of the nine-day festival saw customers purchasing vehicles across a wide age range, from 19 to 76 years. First-time buyers accounted for seven out of every 10 deliveries, underlining the role of pre-owned cars in enabling vehicle ownership.

“Navratri is when India brings home a new car, and yesterday 750 families did that with us,” said Vikram Chopra, Builder, Cars24.

Financing and rural push

More than 55 per cent of the cars delivered on the day were financed through loans, indicating that credit availability remained a key enabler of festive purchases.

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Rural demand also stood out. Vehicles linked to rural RTOs contributed over 40 per cent of Cars24’s deliveries, while 28 per cent of deliveries went to pin codes where the company had recorded no sales on the corresponding day last year.

Platform activity beyond sales

Cars24 said over 50 lakh vehicle owners used its platform on October 11 for services beyond car purchases. These included insurance renewals, challan payments, Pollution Under Control Certificate checks and FASTag recharges, with a transaction being recorded every two seconds.

The company’s festive-quarter expectation is for business to grow 55–60 per cent. Shivanshu Makkar, builder at Cars24, said Navratri deliveries are generally 40–50 per cent higher than usual, while the first day can see four to five times normal volumes as buyers time purchases around auspicious dates.

Used-car market outlook

The performance comes amid expectations that India’s used-car market will grow 12–15 per cent year on year during the October–December festive quarter, supported by improving consumer sentiment, rural demand and first-time buyers.

SUVs remain the fastest-growing category, expanding at nearly 1.5 times the pace of hatchbacks, with demand increasingly shifting towards pre-owned vehicles.

In terms of vehicle fuel preferences, petrol remained the most popular fuel type, while CNG recorded the strongest growth, with hybrids growing from a smaller base.

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Spinny also reports record day

The momentum was not limited to Cars24. Rival used-car platform Spinny delivered 1,370 cars across 24 cities on October 11, its highest-ever single-day total, according to company founder and CEO Niraj Singh. The volume was 96 per cent higher than on the first day of Navratri last year and 1.7 times Spinny’s previous single-day record.

Pune led with 180 deliveries, while Delhi-NCR, Maharashtra and Karnataka together accounted for 62 per cent of the total.