India’s top-selling car for over 14 years now, Maruti Suzuki Alto has reached a new sales milestone its lifetime journey and now has crossed a sales milestone of 35 lakh units being sold in the Indian domestic market. It has taken a little over 17 years for Alto to achieve this new milestone. Maruti Suzuki Alto became India’s favourite car and the rise in sales of Alto also determines the rise of Indian middle class for whom Maruti Suzuki Alto was the first family car.
Alto’s key success lies in its affordable pricing, compact design and high mileage than its rivals which has kept its sales at a constant high for over a decade.
Maruti Suzuki’s Alto success timeline:
Maruti Suzuki Alto was first launched in India and was a successor to the iconic Maruti Suzuki 800. The car was equipped with a 796 cc 3-cylinder engine that had a decent power output of 47 hp. It took the company 3 years to reach its first sales milestone of selling 1 lakh cars and since Maruti Suzuki averages a sales of over 1 lakh units of Alto’s every year and celebrated the rollout of 5 lakh cars in August 2006. The first million sales of Maruti Suzuki Alto came in less than 8 years of its inception. As the world was slipping into global economic crisis, Maruti Suzuki celebrated its first million sales but did not stop there.
The next half a million sales of Maruti Suzuki came in next two years with average sales of Maruti Suzuki Alto going up to 15 lakh and the company also introducing a the powerful Alto K10 with a 1L engine. The second million sales came April 2012, It took Maruti Suzuki a little less than 4 years to sell over 10 lakh Alto and by then the name Alto in itself had become a synonym to a small and affordable cars.
Maruti Suzuki’s Alto story can be described by its market share in the segment. The car dominated a strong market share of 34 per cent with 9 players in the market and till today it has over 33 per cent market share with the segment having 10 vehicles. The A2 segment has been constantly dominated by Maruti Suzuki Alto and is a key reason on why Alto is now at par with other iconic cars like Maruti Suzuki 800.
The scale of Maruti Suzuki Alto production was at its peak with its Manesar and Gurugram factory running packed. Over next four years, between April 2012 – February 2016, Maruti Suzuki sold another 10 lakh Alto’s in the country taking the count to 30 lakh cars sold in 15 years a milestone even the company did not expect to reach in such a quick time. Maruti Suzuki Alto K10 got a full model change in 2014 and also got the company’s Auto-Gear shift (AGS) technology. Alto was the second car in Maruti’s portfolio to get an AMT gearbox after Maruti Suzuki Celerio.
Now in February 2018, after 24 months Maruti Suzuki Alto sales added another 5 million to its total sales crossing 35 lakh cumulative sales in India. The big achievement here is to have sustained the sales of Alto without any major upgrades or facelifts. Maruti Suzuki did introduce many special editions of Alto over its lifetime. Maruti Suzuki Alto has also updated itself with the latest safety norms and now get driver side airbag as a standard feature from the base variant. On the mechanical front, Alto’s fuel efficiency has also grown by 46 percent from claiming 16.9 kmpl in 2000 to 24.7 kmpl in 2017-18.
What’s also interesting is that back in 2000, Maruti Suzuki Alto was priced at Rs 2.99 lakh and now after 18 years of being in market, keeping rising input costs, inflation, commodity prices in mind, the car’s starting price has in fact gone down to Rs 2.54 lakh.
Additionally, Maruti Suzuki has also exported over 4 lakh Altos to over 70 countries including SriLanka, Algeria, Chile, UK and Netherlands being its top markets. Interestingly, in India Maruti Suzuki says that about 25 per cent of Alto sales contribution comes from young customers with less than 30 years of age and this contribution has grown by 4 percent in the last three years. The growth of Alto brand has also highlighted the trust in Maruti Suzuki by first-time car-buyers.
Ever since its inception in September 2000, Maruti Suzuki Alto has been in the limelight and as it climbed up the sales chart to number 1 spot, there was no looking back. Many brands tried to eat into Alto’s market share but in vain. Nissan revived its Datsun brand and positioned as its affordable car brand to take on the mighty Alto, Datsun Go was launched with a lot of anticipation but the product failed. Renault Kwid was then launched and while the car did great for Renault in India, it still did not catch up with the Alto and same was the case with Datsun Redi-Go.
Media and reviews often criticised the car for being unsafe, Global New Car Assessment Program (GNCAP) rewarded a zero-star safety rating for India’s most popular car, but the car did meet all prescribed safety norms set by Government of India. With changing scenario, Maruti Suzuki Alto is now ready to adapt to upcoming crash testing, safety and emission norms and expect a Maruti Suzuki take the quality of its best selling car a notch up with every passing milestone.
