Baleno becomes Maruti Suzuki’s top seller, WagonR sales go down
Top Indian car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki has had it’s premium compact the Baleno, tower above the other offerings, Dzire, Swift and Wagon R, which has now become the second largest selling car in the in the country, in the month of March 2017. The company has sold 16,426 units of the Baleno overall, this being the highest number ever recorded for the premium compact hatchback. This showed a growth rate of a whopping 163.40 percent. Out of these, 6,236 units were sold in March 2016.
Experts in the industry speculate that this resulted from the product hitting the sweet spot with a high demand being met with supply. Ever since i launched, the Baleno has been quite a popular model, with a massive pile of orders that are still pending. The company was unable to meet the high demand earlier, due to certain constraints on production. However, the launch of the new plant in Gujarat has gotten the company right back on track, filling up all the orders that were left pending. Yet, the Baleno still has over 80,ooo pending orders with a waiting period of around 20 to 21 weeks.
The PwC partner, Abdul Majeed, commented on this development saying, “Baleno has been a popular model because it very well captures the aspiration of the customers. Another reason is the styling and the features. When customers think of buying a new car they think of the popular cars. Also, with the opening of the Gujarat plant, the carmaker is fulfilling its pending orders.”
Kaushik Madhavan, the Director of Mobility Practice (Automotive & Transportation) for Frost & Sullivan further added saying, “Baleno has recently got a new variant on its RS version which has created more excitement among the premium hatchback buyers. This can be one of the contributory factors to the huge numbers.”
In another surprising turn of events, the WAgonR has been left out of the list of the top five selling cars. It’s even fallen short of the Hyundai Grand i10 that’s been relaunched with minor model changes, leading to higher sales and enquiries.
