Responding to falling demand for mini and compact cars in India, market leader Maruti Suzuki has announced a substantial cut in their prices to Rs 4.99 lakh for the month of June 2024. The three models covered under the ‘Dream Series’ offer are Alto k10, S-presso and Celerio. Currently, their average prices are upwards of Rs 6-7 lakh.
“We’ve seen that in the premium hatchback there’s good traction now and we’ve been able to rejuvenate the segment. Contribution of premium hatch segment is 43% in May. In June we would like to focus on small entry car segment. We’re launching a ‘Dream series’ edition based on the feedback of our target customers. We’re focussing on utility and convince of the customer. This is valid for the month of June for now,” Partho Banerjee, sales and marketing head, Maruti Suzuki India Limited said.
The company also announced a price reduction for various models in its Auto Gear Shift (AGS) lineup. The price cut applies to several models, including the Alto K10, S-Presso, Celerio, Wagon-R, Swift, Dzire, Baleno, Fronx, and Ignis, in a bid to make its AGS variants more affordable, too. “We’ve also done some price rationalisation for automatic variant in the small entry car segment also. We’ve seen that in case of NEXA models, the penetration was 20% but in ARENA models the penetration of AGS was 10%,” he adds.
The aim of the move is to rejuvenate the hatchback segment.Maruti’s initiatives to revv up the entry-level segment come on the back of dwindling sales in the segment with SUV sales recently crossing the 50% mark. The volumes in the entry-level hatchback segment fell to their lowest at 1.6 lakh units, in 2023-24, from the peak of 4.5 lakh, seven years ago.
In May 2024, the two segments that includes models like S-presso, Baleno, Celerio, Ignis and the newly launched Swift, sold 78108 units vs 83,655 in May 2023. Maruti’s total domestic sales for the month stood at 146,694 units as compared to 146,596 in May 2023, clocking a growth of just 0.1%.
The overall industry numbers stood at 350,257 units in May 2024, up 4.4% from 3,35,436 units in the same period last year.
Last year, the company sold close to 1,32,000 AGS models. “We’re expecting a growth of maybe 15-20% by doing this price rationalisation in this financial year. We want more and more customers at the entry-level also to upgrade to the automatic variants,” Banerjee said.
