Swift, the premium hatchback of Maruti Suzuki is facing competition from the newly launched model Baleno that has eaten the share of sales of Swift for the second consecutive month. Swift sales dropped by 34 percent in November and 16 percent in December. On the whole, the sales of the vehicle increased by 4 percent in the period between April and December.
As per the sales data, the average monthly sales of the vehicle dropped to 13,252 units per month from 17,800 units per month in the last two months. The sales of Swift accounted to 11,859 units in November and 14,548 units in December. These figures in 2014 were 17,900 units and 17,410 units respectively.
Baleno is priced around 9 percent higher than Swift, but it has clocked sales of 20,000 units per month in the last two months. Eventually, Baleno is the highest selling premium hatchback in December 2015 surpassing Hyundai i20.
Maruti Suzuki is facing capacity crunch due to the new launches such as S Cross and Baleno that have made the number of Swift low. As per the reports, Baleno has received around 70,000 units of bookings and the waiting period is several months. Maruti is aimed to increase the production of the model, but the waiting period will be six months.
Though Swift is the most successful model from Maruti Suzuki, the Dzire, a compact sedan has taken the lead over the hatchback model in the past few months.
Swift has been the dominator despite competition from many challengers such as Nissan Micra, Volkswagen Polo, Honda Brio, Chevrolet Beat, Toyota Etios Liva, Tata Bolt and Renault Pulse. Even Maruti Suzuki tried to challenge the model with the launch of Ritz, a hatchback model priced similarly with a new radical design theme. But the demand for the best seller was too high that the Ritz was redirected to the Mumbai taxi market.
