By Bharath Rajeswaran
(Reuters) -India’s benchmark indexes rose on the first day of 2025, led by auto stocks that were boosted by a rise in monthly sales for top carmaker Maruti Suzuki and peer Mahindra & Mahindra.
The Nifty 50 rose 0.41% to 23,742.90 points on Wednesday, while the BSE Sensex gained 0.47% to 78,507.41.
Eleven of the 13 major sectors advanced, with the auto index rising 1.3%.
Shares of Maruti Suzuki, which sells most cars in India, climbed 3.2% after the company said sales to dealers rose about 30% in December.
Mahindra & Mahindra gained 2.4% after its car sales rose 18% amid strong demand for sports utility vehicles.
Mahindra and Maruti were the top two Nifty 50 gainers by percentage.
India’s blue-chip indexes rose to record highs early in 2024 but slowing corporate earnings and an exodus of foreign funds curtailed annual gains to about 8.5%, the least among major global peers, and pushed the indexes into correction territory.
In 2025, the markets will be shaped by corporate earnings, India’s upcoming federal budget, the policies of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration as well as the Federal Reserve’s rate trajectory, Ross Maxwell, global strategy operations lead at trading platform VT Markets, said.
On Wednesday, the broader, more domestically focussed smallcaps and midcaps rose 1% and 0.4%, respectively.
Among individual stocks, two-wheeler maker Bajaj Auto and tractor maker Escorts Kubota lost 0.7% and 1%, respectively, after posting a drop in December sales.
Meanwhile, power generation firm SJVN rose 6.2% after signing a deal with a state government for energy storage projects.
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza, Sonia Cheema and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
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