Maruti Swift draws 15000 bookings

Maruti Suzuki has notched up 15,000 bookings for its premium hatchback Swift, which was launched eight days back.

"We have 15,000 bookings as of today. Not since the 1990s has there been a booking and then a waiting period," said a senior spokesperson for Maruti Suzuki yesterday.

At present, the waiting period is anytime between a week and more than a month, depending on the model. The production target for the car is 5,000 units per month.

Maruti Udyog has invested Rs 440 crore in developing the Swift. Jagdish Khattar, managing director, Maruti Udyog, had mentioned here last week that Rs 190 crore (about 43 per cent) of the Rs 440 crore was contributed by the company's vendors.

Khattar, who was in Chennai to launch Swift, said four changes were made to the car to tailor it to Indian conditions.

The changes were related to ground clearance and suspension, air conditioning and seat design.

The changes have also helped Maruti keep the localisation content at 86 per cent compared with 14 per cent of the Hyundai Getz. The high localisation content explains the aggressive pricing that Maruti has come out with (Rs 3.87 lakh for the base model versus the Rs 4.5 lakh tag for the Getz).

Dealers, too, are clearly happy. ABT Ltd, a leading Maruti car dealer in Chennai with two outlets in the city and one each in Coimbatore, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai, has been witnessing steady bookings.

The bookings have been mainly in the middle and higher segments, as "the pricing has been done in such a way that the customers are getting value for money", said a spokesperson for the dealership.

He gauges that almost 97 per cent of the customers who test drive the car rate its performance as "very good" overall and this response has been uniform across all five dealerships.

In May, Maruti dispatched 2,981 units of the Swift.