Maruti eyes 25% of India’s SUV market

To achieve the target, India’s largest automaker plans to focus on increasing sales of its SUV models 10 lakh or more and strengthen your brand positioning through your premium Nexa sales channel.

“In FY22, our share of the SUV market was 10.2% and in FY23 was just over 12%. But if you look at each quarter in the last fiscal year, our Q4FY23 SUV market share was 17% because of the inclusion of the Grand Vitara. So we went from 10.2% to 17%. So now we have to increase this 17% share to 25% fixed for the whole year. Let’s say we start with 20% in Q1 FY24 and grow to 27% in Q4 so that for the full year we are at around 25% market share,” said Shashank Srivastava, senior executive director, Maruti Suzuki.

Srivastava expects the SUV segment to account for about 47% of the 4.10 million passenger vehicles sold in the current fiscal, with an estimated size of 1.9 million units. Maruti would need to sell around 475,000 SUVs to achieve its target.

The automaker is set to launch its latest crossover SUV the Fronx by the end of the month, followed by its urban lifestyle offering the Jimny, an iconic Suzuki nameplate that will be offered here as a four-wheel drive. It already sells its Grand Vitara mid-SUV and Brezza compact SUV in the market.

Maruti Suzuki’s strategy is to capture a quarter of the SUV market and become the top player in the segment, beating rivals Hyundai, Kia, Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors. It has so far received over 16,000 bookings for the Frons, and around 24,000 for the Jimny, which it believes will eventually settle into a more niche, lifestyle segment, with the Frons driving the bulk of the volumes across the two products. With Grand Vitara.

“The thing with niche products like the Jimny is that there will always be a set of passionate customers who will just go and book at the first opportunity, whereas the Fronx is a brand new vehicle, and the brand proposition needs clarification to the customers. And I think That said, brand positioning for the Franks is a bigger challenge than the Jimny, although the rewards in terms of volumes will be much greater,” Srivastava said.

He pointed out that after the first month, the incremental bookings for the Jimny have slowed down compared to the Franks, where bookings are now picking up.

With its four SUV products, Maruti Suzuki will cover all the major SUV sub-segments in the market, but it expects to form new sub-segments in categories that have large markets such as the mid-SUV segment.

“We are covering the market very well. However, one interesting segment that is emerging in the mid-SUV space is the three-row SUVs, where some of our competitors have launched new products. We will investigate and take a decision in future, but right now we are very focused on setting up these products,” Srivastava said.

Maruti Suzuki is focusing on wooing the young SUV buyer through its refreshed product line-up to recapture the market share handed over to rivals in recent years.