Maruti Suzuki Baleno has been receiving as many as 1,000 orders per day, according to a report. Although there have been days when the car received 700-800 bookings per day, there have indeed been days when the number of orders received for the Maruti Suzuki Baleno in a day crossed 1,000.
Maruti Suzuki domestic sales rose 10 per cent to 110,599 units in November. The volumes were led by the compact car models including the newly launched Baleno, Swift, Celerio and DZire.
Maruti Suzuki launched the premium hatchback, the Baleno on 26 October and the company sold 4,229 units of the car before November 2015. The Baleno has become another successful model for India's largest car manufacturer with bookings crossing 21,000 units within two weeks of the launch.
Maruti’s other hatchback swift and Hyundai’s i20 are also in good demand.
According to the report, hatchbacks were the most preferred customer choice, figuring in consideration sets for nearly 47 per cent consumers with their actual demand clocking in 48 per cent of the overall figure. The sedan category also saw consideration of 26 per cent and demand at 25 per cent.
Maruti and Hyundai occupied the top slots in the hatchback as well as the sedan segment. Honda also has a prominent presence in the sedan segment, but no car is close enough to match the booking received by Baleno.
Baleno is surely Maruti’s answer to Hyundai’s premium hatchback i20 which was cruising smoothly with almost no competition.
However, the huge demand for Baleno also means the carmaker would need to be prepared to cater to the high demand for the model.
"We hope to achieve leadership market share in the premium hatchback segment. We have invested about 1,060 crore in this project (manufacturing of Baleno). We will be making exports to 100 overseas locations including Europe, Japan, South America in 2016," RS Kalsi, Executive Director, Sales and Marketing, MSI, had said.
Offered in seven colours, the Baleno has been priced in the range of Rs.4.99 lakh to Rs.8.11 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). Under the hood, Maruti Baleno includes 1.2-litre K-Series petrol engine and 1.3-litre DDiS diesel engine. While the 1.2-litre K-Series petrol engine is tuned to develop 83bhp and 115Nm of torque, the 1.3-litre DDiS diesel mill churns out 74bhp and 190Nm of torque.
As for fuel efficiency, the Maruti Baleno diesel is tuned to deliver fuel efficiency of 27.39kmpl and the petrol unit returns a claimed fuel efficiency of 21.4kmpl.
BW Reporters
The author is Senior Correspondent with BW Businessworld
