Maruti Suzuki says will not ignore any segment

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Country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) would continue to bring in models with varied body styles as it aims to cater to 'every segment and lifestyle', a top company official said. The auto major, which has over 50 per cent market share in the domestic passenger vehicle segment, is also focussing on giving enhanced features across its model range with market moving gradually towards premium products.

"Our intent is that we will provide car for every pocket for every lifestyle and for every aspiration and we will also keep focus on the premiumisation in terms of the variants which we are giving," MSI Senior Executive Director (Sales and Marketing) RS Kalsi told PTI.

The company's strategy is keep launching varied body types -- hatchbacks, sedans and SUVs, he added.

"We won't ignore any vertical," Kalsi said.

He was responding to a query if the company would focus more on SUV body style going ahead as the segment is showing tremendous growth in the country.

He, however, added that Vitara Brezza has given the company some good insight in the market place and certainly MSI would respond to expectations of the customers.

On rolling out vehicles with premium features, Kalsi said with changing economic profile of the customers they now seek a vehicle which does not have any functional compromise.

"So they want good features even in the entry level. We are not compromising on any of the functional features. So it is not like earlier times when we used to go for bare bones model at lower price. It is not so now," he noted.

On sales network, Kalsi said that the company is focussing both on urban and rural areas for future growth.

"We are bringing in new dealers, investing in land parcels, which will be given to dealers, sales network expansion is as important as products," he added.

Kalsi said the company is on track for double digit growth in the current fiscal, he added.

Couple of years back, MSI had announced a target to achieve a target of 2 million sales per annum by 2020.

Kalsi said MSI is committed to 20 lakh sales target and introduction of 20 models by 2020.

"Anything else which might come would be a bonus," he added.

In the first quarter of this fiscal, MSI sold 4,90,479 vehicles, a growth of 24.3 per cent over the same period of the previous year. Sales in the domestic market stood at 4,63,840 units, a growth of 25.9 per cent.

The company sold a total of 16,53,500 units in 2017-18, a growth of 14.5 per cent over 2016-17.