)
It is positioning Ciaz as a natural upgrade for its Ritz, Swift and Dzire customers, who are looking to upgrade. The Ciaz is priced at least Rs 40,000 lower than Honda City.
The company has invested Rs 620 crore to develop Ciaz on a completely new platform over a period of 42 months involving its own R&D engineers along with global R&D team in Japan.
"We are aiming to tap Ritz and Dzire customers who are looking to upgrade to a bigger sedan. Ciaz has been designed keeping in mid aspirations of mid-size premium sedan customer," Tarun Garg, vice president (sales), MSIL told Business Standard.
Maruti has priced its petrol version in the range of Rs 7.35 lakh to Rs 8.98 lakh and diesel version in the range of Rs 8.42 lakh to Rs 10.21 lakh. The automatic version is priced at Rs 9.04 lakh and 9.74 lakh (ex-showroom, Bangalore).
Ciaz will compete with Honda City, Volkswagen Vento and Hyundai Verna in the A3+ segment. Currently, Honda City sells around 5,000 units a month in this segment, which has a market size of 16,000 units a month.
"We are looking at sales of around 5,000 units a month for Ciaz and over the next one year we wish to sell 60,000-80,000 units," Garg said.
With the help of Ciaz, Maruti Suzuki aims to achieve double digit growth in sales during the current fiscal. It sold 10,53,689 cars in 2013-14. During the first six months of the current fiscal (April-September), Maruti achieved a growth of 14.7 per cent at 558,330 cars compared to 486,908 cars sold in the corresponding period last year.
"We have performed better than the competition during the first half of this fiscal with 14.7 per cent growth. The industry grew by just 4 per cent during the same period," Garg said.
Maruti is also looking at improving its export sales during the current year. Last year, it exported 103,000 units. It is planning to export Ciaz to West Asia, Latin America and African regions.
