Maruti Brezza has been the best selling SUV in India for years now. Launched back in March 2016, it has been more than 3 years that this SUV has been ruling sales chart. In these three years, many new cars have been launched, to rival the supremacy of Brezza, but none managed to reduce the sales figures of Brezza. Until the launch of Hyundai Venue in May 2019.
There was a time when Maruti Brezza used to register sales of more than 15,000 units a month on average. In comparison, rival SUVs in the segment, Tata Nexon registers about 4,500 units a month, Ford EcoSport about 3,000 units a month while newly launched Mahindra XUV500 got about 5,000 units a month.
Hyundai Venue, with its aggressive pricing, has eaten into sales of Maruti Brezza immediately post launch. From selling more than 14,000 units in March 2019, sales of Maruti Brezza have declined to less than 9,000 units in May and June 2019.
One of the biggest reason behind Hyundai Venue eating into sales of Maruti Brezza, is the difference in base price. Base Venue is priced about Rs 1 lakh cheaper than the Brezza base. This is because Hyundai Venue is offered with petrol engine whereas Brezza is only offered with diesel engine.
Maruti is working on launching Brezza with a petrol engine, which is expected to happen by end of this year, or early next year. The new petrol engine is expected to be borrowed from Ciaz, which is a 1.5 liter 4 cylinder unit with SHVS tech. This engine is rated to deliver 105 PS and 138 Nm via 5 speed manual transmission.
But until the petrol variant arrives, Maruti dealers plan to take on the Hyundai Venue onslaught by offering free 5 year warranty, along with benefits and discount offers of up to Rs 30,000.
Before this offer, Maruti Brezza used to come with free 2 year / 40,000 kms warranty. You had the option to extend the warranty to 5 yrs / 1 lakh kms. But that came at a cost. Now, the same is being offered for free. Will this help increase sales of Brezza, we will know soon.
