Just a week after relaunching its entry-level car Alto K10 at an introductory price starting from Rs 3.99 lakh to Rs. 5.83 lakh (ex-showroom), Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) has confirmed that it has garnered 2,000 bookings.
Interestingly, the highest priced AMT trim accounted for a major chunk of bookings at 34 percent, followed by VXi+, VXi at (28 percent each), LXi (8 percent) and the standard or base version (2 percent).
“While 1,500 units of the new Alto have been booked, as we speak, 500 more units will be booked by tomorrow morning. So that makes it 2,000 units in a week,” MSIL executive director (marketing and sales) Shashank Srivastava told Moneycontrol.com. When asked about the sales target for this model, Srivastava said, “As I said last time, we used to sell 75,000-80,000 units per annum. We should be able to replicate those numbers and can even garner incremental volumes if the market gets a bit more buoyant.”
MSIL, which has been selling 100 Altos every hour for the last 22 years, had phased out the K10 model in February 2020 before BSVI emission norms kicked in. The company is reintroducing the K10 even as the entry-level minicar market in India has declined from 266,994 units in FY21 to around 238,297 units a year in FY22 (as per the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers). Industry estimates suggest that the numbers are expected to decline further due to high commodity prices and rising preference for micro and compact SUVs.
Based on MSIL’s Heartect platform (which also underpins the S-Presso), the new Alto K10 is equipped with the 67hp, 1.0 litre K10C engine, which is mated to a five-speed manual (24.39 km/l mileage) or automated manual transmission (24.90 km/litre mileage). Slotted a notch below the S-Presso (positioned as a micro-SUV), the new Alto will coexist with the Alto 800 (Rs 3.39-5.03 lakh).
Srivastava had earlier told Moneycontrol that the company will not reduce its focus on the small car segment as he believes this segment is still very strong and still contributes 40 percent to the overall passenger vehicle market.
“In terms of absolute volumes, the market size of the hatches (A and B segments combined) is also pretty strong at 11.5 lakh units per annum (out) of 30 lakh vehicles sold. It is definitely under pressure because of (rising) commodity prices, (retail) prices going up, affordability getting hit because of regulatory reasons, etc. So the hatches are not disappearing in the foreseeable future and is still a large market to serve,” Srivastava had said earlier.
While launching the model, Srivastava said that while the minicars constitute around 18 percent of the overall industry, the premium hatch segment is about 20 percent. “In the last six years, the minicar segment was constant at about 22 percent and overall hatches was about 45-46 percent. However, last year it went down to 18 percent,” he added.
While MSIL has no plans to launch an electric or hybrid variant of this model, a CNG-powered Alto is expected in the next few months.
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