With four products in the SUV category, Maruti Suzuki expects to gain 25% market share in the segment from 12% last year
With four products in the SUV category, Maruti Suzuki expects to gain 25% market share in the segment from 12% last year
Updated May 12, 2023, 6:44 PM IST
Popularity of sports Utility Vehicles, or SUVs, has grown by leaps and bounds in India in the last few years, so much so that they now constitute 47 per cent of the country’s overall market — once considered to be a small-car market by global players. Market leader Maruti Suzuki, with a strong presence of 63 per cent in the non-SUV segment, which include vans, hatchbacks, sedans, MPVs, Vans, etc. is now eyeing to be the leader in the compact SUV segment. This segment is dominated by Tata Motors with 31 per cent market share.
“If you look at the last five years, in the non-SUV space, our market share has been climbing from 58 to almost 65 per cent. In the entry hatches, our market share is above 70 per cent. When you combine this with our SUV market share then dramatically our overall market share falls to 43 per cent. If we don’t have a good market share in the SUV space we’ll never achieve our aspiration of 50 per cent market share which we’ve enjoyed four times in the last six years,” Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Officer, Marketing and Sales, Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) told Business Today.
Last year, MSIL’s share in the SUV space was 12 per cent. One of the biggest reasons for the company’s low market share in the segment was the lack of good models. “When we started analysing our strategy, we realised that out of 46 brands in the SUV segment, we had just one which was Vitara Brezza, the market leader in the entry SUV space. One big segment which we were totally missing was the mid-SUV segment,” he added.
The mid-SUV segment, with products like Hyundai Creta, Kia Seltos, Tata Harrier is the second-largest segment with 21 per cent market after the entry-level SUV segment, which forms around 23 per cent market and has products like Maruti Brezza, Tata Nexon, Kia Sonet, Tata Punch, Hyundai Venue, etc.
MSIL’s launch of Grand Vitara in September last year marked its entry in the mid-SUV level. “We have sold around 10,000 a month and have received 160,000 bookings since we launched. And within the entry SUV space, we’ve identified two more white spaces—urban trailblazer (Fronx) and lifestyle (Jimny) segment,” added Srivastava.
To differentiate their four products in the SUV category, MSIL has identified their differentiation strategy, “ For example in the entry-SUV space, Brezza is the only vehicle that has got 1.5 litre engine, which is the performance consumers are looking for in this segment. In the space of lifestyle SUV, we’ll place Jimny as the legacy, global brand with great off-road capability. Fronx takes care of urban, sophisticated customers looking for a tech-savvy product while Vitara has space and tech, without the compromise on performance,” he further said.
Srivastava said that the pace at which the SUV market changed was little surprising to them. “Just three years back it was 22 per cent, now it’s 43 per cent. SUV is a much more crowded space than passenger cars. There are 46 brands here as compared with hatch where there are only 13. Even with small market share, we can be no 1 because it’s a fragmented space,” he said.
“With these four vehicles we’re expecting to gain 25 per cent market share from 12 per cent last year. That will be 4,75,000 in volume terms. Even with that we’ll be the number 1 SUV maker in the country,” said Srivastava.
Published on: May 12, 2023, 6:44 PM IST