Big Battle Over Small SUVs

Compact SUVs are an outlier in a sluggish passenger vehicle market in India. With everybody aspiring for a piece of action, competition is set to ratchet up.

- Sumant Banerji

Few hours after the national launch of the Maruti Swift in May 2005, a clutch of top executives from Suzuki Motor Corp. and its Indian subsidiary Maruti were in a huddle in the business centre of hotel Maurya Sheraton (now ITC Maurya) in central Delhi. Such meetings are routine; held to analyse the initial feedback after the launch of any car. As its first offering in the nascent premium hatchback category in India, Swift was an important product for Maruti.

During the meeting, Mayank Pareek, who was then the head of sales and marketing at Maruti, suggested that the team of engineers from Japan look into the possibility of developing a compact SUV based on the Swift. The suggestion was unanimously rejected, even scoffed at. The engineers contended that making a sports utility vehicle (SUV) on such a small car was not possible. Pareek argued there would be strong demand from consumers for such a vehicle but the engineering team was unconvinced.

More than a decade later, Maruti would launch the Vitara Brezza compact SUV based on the Swift, which in its first year itself would become the best selling SUV in the country. It also propelled Maruti to the leadership position in the utility vehicle category, an area where the company used to be weak till a few years back.