sales volume more than doubled from a quarter earlier in the julyseptember period the company said while ajoy chawla chief executive officer of the jewelry division of titan co said demand in tier 2 and 3 markets was fueled by weddings that were postponed earliersome farmers preferred to invest in gold the postcovid economic uncertainties will further strengthen demand as gold has emerged as the safest investment option said ahammed mp chairman of keralabased malabar gold diamonds tanya rastogi director of lala jugal kishore jewellers said the rural sector is an untapped treasure for the jewelry industrybharat petroleum the nations secondbiggest fuel retailer said its sales in urban pockets had almost halved prompting it to quickly focus on the rural and highways segments to contain the market share loss we want to capture the rural presence and the indian rural growth said n vijayagopal the companys finance directorflash in the pandemand for everything from tractors to jewellery notwithstanding rural india alone may not be able to underpin a recovery in the economy thats headed for its worst annual contraction on record according to top company officials and analysts with more than eight million reported infections the south asian nation is the secondworsthit by the pandemic after the us and risks remainwhile demand is good and is likely to remain so for the rest of the year due to a good monsoon its difficult to predict sales beyond that rc bhargava chairman of automaker maruti told reporters a rush to own private vehicles as people move away from mass transport will be over by january he saidautomobile inventories had piled up in anticipation of strong sales during the octobernovember festive season sales were already going through their worst slump even before the virus and pent up demand during the nationwide lockdown led to increased sales on a lower basei would not really bet on the mass consumer coming back in a hurry because so far i am not seeing any evidence of it rajiv bajaj managing director at bajaj auto told cnbc tv18 im extremely concerned im very anxiousrural demand will perk up somewhat but will not be able to offset the shortfall in urban demand because the share of agriculture in gross value added of the indian economy ranged between 146 and 178 during 201213 to 201920 according to india ratings and researchsome experts highlighted that india is witnessing an uneven recovery where upperincome groups are seeing a rapid and strong improvement in their economic conditions while those with lower incomes are losing groundi must say that while parts of the marketplace are coming back to normal it still is a reasonable kshaped recovery said dipak gupta joint managing director at kotak mahindra bank ltd unfortunately the upper part of the kcurve is still small as compared to the lower part with assistance from nupur acharya anirban nag pratik parija rahul satija vrishti beniwal and debjit chakraborty bloomberg published on nov 9 2020 at 0934 am ist telegram facebook