Goa: India’s largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki India, has seen its market share dented in the past few years due to a lack of products in the growing SUV segment. But now, it’s eyeing a 25 per cent share in this segment — double its current level — on the back of new model introductions.
“We should be able to gain the top slot in the SUV segment if supplies are not affected during the year,” Shashank Srivastava, senior executive director (marketing and sales) at Maruti Suzuki, said at a roundtable with journalists Tuesday.
“Our market share last quarter already stood at 17.5 per cent. With full-year availability of the Grand Vitara, and two new products shortly slated for launch in the compact SUV segment, it is possible to increase our market share to 25 per cent in this category,” he said.
Maruti Suzuki’s overall market share in the passenger vehicle category has come down to about 41 per cent from over 50 per cent a few years ago. With sales of 202,800 units, the company’s share in the SUV category stood at 12.6 per cent for the last fiscal.
Srivastava said the company has 1,94,000 pending orders for its range of SUVs, which also includes the popular Brezza. As many as 1.9 million SUVs are projected to be sold in the ongoing financial year — an increase of around 19 per cent over 1.67 million units sold in FY23.
Product lineup
Maruti Suzuki’s current offerings in the SUV segment are the Brezza and the Grand Vitara. It launched a new variant of the Brezza in June and the Grand Vitara in September.
It has also announced two new models, the Fronx and the Jimny, which will be available in the next couple of months.
According to Srivastava, the company has already received more than 16,500 bookings for the Fronx and more than 24,500 bookings for the Jimny. For the Brezza, the company currently has a booking backlog of 60,000 vehicles, while the number for the Grand Vitara is 90,000 units. Maruti’s total pending orders stand at about 3,80,000 units.
He said that among SUVs, the sales of mid-size sports utility vehicles grew the fastest in the last financial year, shooting up by 41 per cent to 8,72,002 units. An additional 7,59,000 units were sold in the compact SUV segment, which went up by 31.2 per cent over the previous fiscal.
Srivastava expects the share of SUVs in the overall passenger vehicle market to continue to grow to touch 50 per cent over the next 3-4 years, after which the segment will plateau — a trend seen in markets globally.
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