Invicto is Maruti Suzuki's big premiumisation leap. Will it be able to reinvent itself?
Maruti and you think of a small, workhorse car that endures and needs little maintenance. Maruti Suzuki India Ltd became India's biggest car maker riding high on that image. But what remained a boon for decades started to look like a curse later.
The market and the customer preferences changed so much in the past few years that the company had to break out of its image to retain its position as India's biggest car maker. In a new market, Maruti Suzuki is in a rush to reinvent itself. Small cars are selling less as they are more difficult to make as well as offer little scope of growing profits.
With rising disposable incomes and a demand for experience, Indians are dumping the hatchbacks and climbing into premium vehicles, the SUVs and the MPVs. Four out of every ten passenger vehicles now sold in India are these premium vehicles. Demand for such vehicles has trebled in the three years to March 2023.
The market landscape has shifted radically for Maruti Suzuki where it needs more premium sets of wheels to keep zooming ahead. Maruti' Suzuki's latest offering, Invicto, is a big leap into the premium segment. Brezza, which had heralded its entry into the segment in 2016, was a runaway success.
The company built on that success and went on to create NEXA, a premium sales channel which includes Grand Vitara, Fronx, Jimny and XL6. Invicto, of course, bulges up Nexa, but it also drives Maruti Suzuki into an entirely new territory — the above-Rs 20 lakh segment. It puts the company in the premium three-row segment, has a 7-seater model starting from Rs 24.79 lakh and an 8-seater model from Rs 24.84 lakh.
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