Maruti Suzuki has a plan of selling 1-2 lakh cars via the NEXA network within the next 3 years. It expects sales to grow by 10% in the second half of this year.
Companies selling affordable cars have often faced difficulties selling premium cars. Firstly the showroom experience doesn’t match the level of expectations a premium car buyer has and secondly the staff at the dealers is too busy attending to a number of customers. Since this resulted in the failure of two premium car launches in the form of Grand Vitara and Kizashi by Maruti Suzuki, the Japanese company has come up with a different strategy this time around. They have started a range of new dealerships called NEXA which will only retail the premium products of the brand.
With 35 NEXA outlets currently which are expected to reach 100 outlets by the end of this year, Maruti Suzuki has started selling the S-Cross which it is marketing as a premium crossover. It also has an optimistic target of selling close to two lakh cars within the next three years via the new network of dealerships. While this may not seem much by Maruti standards, it is a big number considering only expensive cars would be sold through it. The growth rate expected by the company for the second half of this year is about 10% which is almost double of the expected industry growth.
The Maruti Suzuki S-Cross was launched yesterday in India and the pricing was also revealed yesterday itself. While the DDiS 200 variants seem to be priced decently, the DDiS 320 variants are priced at a premium of around Rs. 3 lakh over the DDiS 200 variant to variant which is a bit too much and puts it in the price range of full size SUVs. Considering all this, it would be interesting to see how well does the first product to be sold through NEXA dealerships perform. The upcoming products like the Vitara Brezza and the YRA (Fronx) hatchback will also be sold through NEXA and those might add to the volumes.
