With its spy shots all over the internet, Hyundai India has finally unveiled the second-generation Venue, releasing the official photos of the car and a teaser video.
This time, Deepika Padukone is helming the brand duties for the compact SUV. But the real star is the new Venue. This is the first of the 26 ‘new’ vehicles that Hyundai India has promised to launch by 2030. The second-generation is taller and wider than the older version, which has sold about 700,000 units since its launch in May 2019.
What the new Venue shows is how features, which were once the preserve of top-end cars, are now entering the small car and SUV space. The Venue, by virtue of being a sub-four metre vehicle, is considered a small vehicle by the government and attracts a lower 18 per cent GST rate, unlike its bigger sibling, Creta, which is taxed at 40 per cent.
Falling behind
Despite going public last year, Hyundai India seems to have lost some sales momentum in the past few months. From being India’s second-largest carmaker for 25 years, Hyundai is now falling behind domestic manufacturers Mahindra and Mahindra and Tata Motors.
Hyundai India increasingly looked as if it was a one-trick pony, with that one trick being the Creta, which still clearly dominates its segment. This has been my personal experience as well. When folks ask me for car advice, many of them gravitate toward the Creta despite some potentially better and newer options out there.
While sales of the Venue touched 11,484 units in September 2025, it can be attributed to the carmaker clearing older stock ahead of the new model launch. Before that, Hyundai sold between 7,000-8,000 units of the compact SUV every month, well behind segment rivals like the Tata Nexon and Maruti Suzuki Brezza. When the Venue was launched, people were sceptical if the car would be able to redefine the segment, both in terms of performance and features. But, unsurprisingly, it won not only the 2020 Indian Car of the Year (ICOTY) title but also several other major automotive awards.
But the rivals caught up, and consumers believed they offered better value and that the looks of the Venue had started to feel stale. Some rivals like the Mahindra XUV 3XO went many steps forward in terms of features. While I sometimes question Indian car buyers’ obsession with features, particularly new digital features as well as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), some carmakers have clearly failed to offer them.
Indian car buyers are just as tech-obsessed as their Chinese counterparts — they want large digital displays and excellent audio systems. Unfortunately, I believe this obsession with features has taken precedence over the handling and performance of the vehicle. But then again, when you’re stuck for hours on end in a massive traffic jam, like the one seen on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway recently, handling and performance won’t get you out.
So, in the 2025 Venue, you get Level 2 ADAS that uses ultrasonic sensors in the rear to warn you about traffic when you are reversing, a feature that I have grown to find extremely useful. While the ADAS has not been confirmed by Hyundai yet, the car is equipped with electric seats and a twin-screen curved display. It comes with dual tone interiors and has four dots instead of the Hyundai logo on the steering wheel — four dots represent ‘H’ in Morse code. The dots were first seen on the IONIQ 5.
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High hopes
Stale is not something one can say for the new Venue in terms of design — the wheel arches are aggressive and make it look extremely muscular while the front end is chunky too, with its multiple LEDs, both the daytime running lights (DRLs) and the headlights.
The second-generation does stand out, and while I do believe Hyundai’s designs evolve way too fast and are a bit all over the place, the differences between the Verna, Creta, Tucson, and IONIQ 5 are quite extreme, especially considering that they come from the same carmaker. There is, however, a bit of design language similarity between the new Venue and the Creta and Alcazar.
But it is clear that Hyundai will make a big splash with the Venue, falling behind Mahindra and Tata has clearly stung them.The failure of the electric version of the Creta to make a real impact with only 350-400 units sold per month while its rivals like the MG Windsor sell over 4,000 units only makes the pain worse for Hyundai. There is no doubt the new Venue will be a great car to drive and I look forward to driving it soon, but will it be able to propel Hyundai back to second position remains to be seen.
Kushan Mitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. He tweets @kushanmitra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)