Maruti aims to be No.1 in Premium Hatchbacks

Maruti has launched its premium hatchback Baleno, starting from INR 5,74,633 (on-road, Mumbai). The pricing is aggressive, undercutting its competition and with this launch, Maruti aims to be a leader in this segment, in India.

The chief engineer of Suzuki’s Baleno project, Kunihiko Ito, in an interview with ET said the company’s aim in India is to capture the No. 1 position in the premium hatchback segment with the Baleno. He further added, “We would like to have more products in the premium segment. As for the Baleno, volumes in India are very critical to make the project viable.

Over a period of time, we saw the Swift becoming a mainstream vehicle in India and in the case of the global market, the size of the B segment called for a bigger vehicle and Swift was a relatively smaller vehicle.
While this demand came out from the international market, we realised that the Baleno will have potential in India too.”

With regards to competition, Ito said that Baleno was superior. “Styling, performance and fuel efficiency. As a package it is better than competition. It scores very well on comfort and convenience thanks to the usage of gadget. In terms of space it is much bigger than competition. Best in class fuel efficiency, it is lighter than competition, and it is lighter than the Swift by 70kgs …

We have a safety package which you can start off from the beginning. In this vehicle we are trying to create a balance…

it is a total package for style and performance.” he added.

On the expressive design of the Baleno, he commented, “Our objective now is to create the ‘wow’ (factor) in each of our products and that is the objective towards which all of us are working currently. There is no need to create a specific design language. Instead, create ‘wow’ in each of the future cars. Every segment, every brand has its own design, we do not want to harmonise any design.”

The Baleno comes with both, petrol and diesel engine options that are mated to a manual/continuously variable transmission (CVT) gearbox, and a manual gearbox respectively. It will compete head-on with the Hyundai i20 Elite and the Honda Jazz, in the Indian market. The Baleno will also be exported to Europe and other countries, from India.