Forward Thinking

Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Director, Maruti Suzuki India Limited, while addressing the past, the present, and the future, also discusses how cross-consideration isn’t really a big problem for Maruti Suzuki, how ‘fatigue factor’ vis-à-vis a segment does eventually set in, their two price hikes in less than six months, how the trajectory of technological progression depends on the consumers, as well as their design philosophy. Read on… TOS: What’s with India’s SUV fascination, especially compact SUVs? SS: If you look at the SUV segment, it has really been growing in the last few years. It used to be just around 11-12% a few years back, but now, it has become big with 32% of the market. The compact SUV segment is about 16.5% of the total market, which means 50% of the SUVs are now compact SUVs. The rest are mid-size SUVs and premium SUVs. Premium SUVs is only 0.5% and about 15% are the mid-size SUVs. The last few years is when we have seen a huge increase in SUVs. It used to be around 12% in 2012-13 and about16%, five years back. The 16% has now doubled to 32%. The entry SUV was just around 1% seven-eight years back,