Maruti expects big from its small new Alto

Maruti Suzuki has got high hopes with its refurbished Alto as the company feels that this largest selling model will help them maintain its share of the competitive Indian passenger car market. The company had posted a 20.3 per cent fall in profit in the first quarter.The new Alto will be launched in the first week of August. It will have a 1,000cc engine. A senior Maruti official said that the company hopes to expand overall sales for the lower A-segment, comprising M800, Nano, Alto and the standard variant of Santro, by at least 25 per cent. The company is also expecting to sell an additional 7,500 units of Alto every month.

Last year Maruti Suzuki India had sold 765,526 units in the domestic market. It also had a market share of 50.1 per cent. With additional 60,000 units of the new Alto and an additional 30,000 units from other models, in the remaining eight months of the current financial year, Maruti expects to clock close to 860,000 units in 2010-11.

The official of the company also said that the new Alto will be priced a notch above the existing Alto and will meet expectations of people who have been postponing purchase so far due to absence of an aspirational product in this category. The launch of the new Alto comes at a time when a series of Indian car makers have launched new products. In the first half of 2010, there were six new launches which included Beat, Figo, Polo and the new WagonR.

The new Alto will give a tough competition to its rivals who are developing the new and lower-priced products being developed by its competitors. Hyundai Motor India is working on a car smaller than Santro while Tata Motors is developing a car between Nano and Indica.

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