Maruti Suzuki expects substantial increase in SUV market share this fiscal

Country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki is expecting a substantial increase in its market share in the sports utility vehicle (SUV) segment this fiscal. The automaker has attributed the growth to the robust response received for the Brezza and Grand Vitara models. In the remaining part of the financial year, the company plans to introduce more models in the SUV segment.

Maruti Suzuki had a 7.1 per cent market share in the SUV segment in July, which increased to 10.8 per cent in August, 13.01 per cent in September and 14.4 per cent in October. There has been an upward growth in terms of the sales of these models.

The company noted that the market share of the SUVs would have increased further if the company had not faced supply issues with Brezza last month. "I would not like to project a going forward figure but can safely say that we are expecting a good increase (in market share) this fiscal as we expect to launch a few more SUVs," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Senior Executive Officer Marketing & Sales Shashank Srivastava told PTI.

Strengthening the SUV segment is important to Maruti Suzuki as it will help the company regain the overall passenger vehicle market share, which we lost due to non presence in the segment. During the last fiscal, Maruti had a market share of 10.9 per cent in the SUV space.

In FY2019, Maruti's overall market share in the passenger vehicle space stood at 51 per cent but it has come down to 41 per cent in the September quarter this fiscal. The auto maker had a market share of 51.22 per cent in 2018-19 and 51.03 per cent in 2019-20.

Currently, Maruti Brezza is already a market leader in the compact SUV segment while Grand Vitara is also expected to do well in the mid-sized SUV space, Srivastava noted.