The company sold 4,537 units of the newly launched passenger car Indica in August, which has now crossed the 18,000-mark, as compared with 4,087 units in July. Sales of utility vehicles in August were over 2,600 units against 2,172 units in July.

The cheaper variant of the Sumo will cater largely to the rural segment and compete with two of M&M's utility vehicles, Commander and Marshal. M&M has over the years established a strong grip over rural buyers and the Telco gameplan is to challenge the rival at its home turf.

The company did not disclose the price of the stripped-down Sumo variant. It was expected to be around Rs 80,000 cheaper than the standard Sumo model and were to be competitively priced to take on the M&M models, the company had earlier said.

Theex-showroom price of the 10-seater Sumo (Standard) is Rs 4.43 lakh in Mumbai, while that of Marshall and Commander are around Rs 3.50 lakh and Rs 4 lakh respectively. The new version was also to have fewer seats.

Telco's Sumo has been facing stiff competition from M&M, which due to its product range being better positioned to cater to various market segments. Marshall and Commander enjoy decent marketshares in the rural segment, where Telco has not been able to make much headway due to a price disadvantage.

As reported in The Financial Express earlier, Telco has been planning to reposition its Sierra model for the rural segment.

With an upturn visible in the rural economy, M&M has clocked a 15 per cent rise in the sales of utility vehicles in the first quarter while Telco, on the contrary, has posted a 16 per cent drop in sales in the utility vehicle segment in the same period. The company's sales of MUVs fell to 6,620 units from 7,874 units in the first quarter last year.

The Sumo is howeverbelieved to be doing significantly better in the urban markets and is not losing market share to M&M's Armada range.