Maruti betting high on Ciaz, S-Cross; aims to resurrect lost grounds

Maruti Suzuki India is aggressively expanding its boundaries in Indian auto sector to capture a market share in excess of 45%. In order to meet the desired status, the company has asked its dealers to target a 15% growth on the fiscal year basis. The auto-maker is optimistic over the growth as the company's latest entrant Celerio is proving to be a decent sales churner while in the upcoming months, the Japanese manufacturer will launch its saloon Ciaz, which will certainly boost the sales of the company.

In the past couple of years, the auto-maker is witnessing a slow growth in Indian auto-sector while manufacturers like Renault, Ford and Honda are doing pretty good with their new products. Models such as City and Duster has proved to be a life saver for the companies like Honda and Renault and keeping this in mind, India's largest auto-maker is betting big on its new products. As a result of this optimistic approach, Celerio with in its first few weeks of launch managed to grab a booking of 32,000 units. Country's first AMT hatch, Celerio now attracts a waiting period of six to eight months.

According to few dealers we spoke, the AMT variant is becoming customer's first preference as the AMT only constitutes to 49% of the total retailing while the rest 51% of the selling comes from the manual transmission. To further boost the sales, Maruti Suzuki has hold back its price hike across its entire model line-up, and to improve the negative sentiments of the customers, the company is offering special discounts and saving offers on its various models.

Maruti Suzuki in order to expand its current model line-up of 12 vehicles, is expected to launch three new vehicles in upcoming months. First in list is the mid-size sedan, Ciaz followed by a light commercial vehicle in 2015. If media reports are to be believed, the company is also planning to launch a compact SUV S-Cross, sooner than expected. Moreover, the auto-maker is also planning to give a facelift updation to its favourite models such as Swift, Swift Dzire and Alto K10 in coming months. Despite efforts such as alluring discounts & no price hike, the company witnessed a fall of 11.4 percent for the month of April.

In the first month of new financial year, the company managed to retail 86,196 units as compared to 97,302 vehicles in April 2013. The sales of April 2014 were even less than the month of March 2014 with a retailing of 113,350 units thereby resulting a fall of 24 percent. With the new government coming in, it is expected that the market sentiments will improve which as a whole boost the sales of overall Indian auto industry.