Within a week of unveiling the Jimny at the Auto Expo, Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) has bagged bookings for 8,000 units of the lifestyle sports utility vehicle (SUV), an official said. Anticipating robust orders for Jimny in the coming days, a senior company official claimed that the waiting period for this model has already gone up to three months.
Shashank Srivastava, Executive Director - Sales and Marketing, MSIL, had earlier told Moneycontrol, “Since Jimny is a global cult brand, there was already a section of buyers, who were eagerly waiting to buy it. Till today (14th January) morning, we have garnered 2,500 bookings, and by the end of the day we are confident of having 3,000 confirmed bookings.”
It is to be mentioned that bookings of the five-door Jimny, which will be available in a 1.5 litre petrol option, commenced on the day it was unveiled at the Expo.
Maruti Suzuki on 18th January, revealed that the segment wise break up of Jimny is: MT 50% ( Zeta 15 % Alpha 35% )and AT 50% ( Zeta 8% Alpha 42 %).
The Jimny, the entry of which in India had been speculated for more than three years, will be rolled out from MSIL’s Gurugram facility. It will take on the Mahindra Thar (priced in the range of Rs 9.99 lakh - Rs 16.99 lakh, ex-showroom and offered in a three-door variant only), which also saw a 4X2 variant getting added recently.
While Maruti Suzuki did not share Jimny’s price points and monthly production plans, it confirmed that it will be initially sold in a 4WD version, and there would not be a diesel option. Also, the three-door variant, which is being exported to many countries from India, will not be marketed here.
There is speculation that Maruti Jimny may be priced in the range of Rs 10-12.5 lakh, which the company didn’t comment on.
“The pricing and monthly output are very difficult (numbers) to discern at this moment. The introductory price will depend on multiple factors on what the competitor’s (Mahindra Thar) price range is, as well as input costs and total cost of production during those times,” added Srivastava.
“While the waitlist for this model has already gone up to two-three months, I won’t be surprised if we manage to book 10,000 units in a month or so, and customers get to wait for six months,” stated by Srivastava earlier.
It is to be mentioned that MSIL is currently grappling with a pending order book of 366,000 units, of which Ertiga constitutes 91,000 units (31 weeks wait time), Brezza 71,000 units (23-24 weeks wait time) and Grand Vitara 57,000 units (12-16 weeks wait time).
Meanwhile, MSIL has garnered 750 units of the newly-unveiled Fronx (a crossover version of the Baleno hatchback) until the 14th morning. Just like the Jimny, Fronx will be retailed at the company’s 260 (and counting) Nexa showrooms across the country. With the introduction of these two models, the car market leader in India hopes that the proportion of SUV sales from its existing line-up, which currently stands at 13.9 percent, will rise substantially by the end of this year.
As Srivastava observed, “Entry-level SUVs, which saw 665,000 units in sales last year, accounted for 21.7 percent of the PV (passenger vehicle) market and is the largest segment in the industry. Whenever the industry is growing you see a ‘sub-segment’ emerging, and we are seeing two emerging sub-segments, which is not catered to by the industry. While one is the young, urban, tech-savvy consumer who is looking for the Fronx, the second category is the lifestyle SUV off-roading which is growing. With the introduction of Jimny, this segment will grow quite a lot. As a result, our market share in the SUV space will also grow.”
