Maruti Suzuki Revising its Options to Introduce Jimny in India

Maruti Suzuki India has been evaluating the possibility of launching its off-roader Jimny in the domestic market, after having started trading the model from India last month, states the company officials company officials.

Furthermore, the company, has initiated the exports of the Jimny to Latin American countries such as Colombia and Peru in January, however, it is not exporting it to Europe due to the frequent changes in regulations in the continent.

Shashank Srivastava, MSI Executive Director (Marketing and Sales) states, "We are currently evaluating whether the feasibility of it being launched in the domestic market. As you may recall, we had shown this Jimny at the Auto Expo in February 2020, and we got some really nice response. And we are currently studying the various aspects of the marketing as to when, if at all, we can launch that vehicle in India,"

The three-door, four-wheel drive, all-terrain vehicle, Jimny is being exported to Latin America, the Middle East and African markets from India as the company's parent Suzuki Motor Corporation looks to make the country a global production hub for the model.

The company had also annunced that there is a large customer demand across the world well beyond Suzuki Japan capacity for this model and Indian manufacturing would supplement its facility to address this global demand.

Rahul Bharti, MSI Executive Vice-President Corporate and Government Affairs said the company has just initiated the export of Jimny, and it requires to go further into time to get the pace of how the business is and what kind of volumes it is able to get.

He said, “It is a small addition to our exports. And in our overall volume, the fraction would be even smaller. So how much it impacts? I think we still need to take some time and understand. But overall, in terms of volume percentages it is not very high."

Rahul said, "As of now we have started in some markets, Europe has a lot of regulations, and almost every export to Europe keeps stopping every about four or five years because of some new non-tariff barriers or some new technical regulation that they bring in. So as of now, Maruti is not exporting to Europe. So we will see as it goes along.”