Maruti Suzuki on Saturday formally announced that its board has given approval to launch a new light commercial vehicle (lCV) in the Indian markets.
Speaking with the press, company Chairman, RC Bhargava announced that it plans to launch a new lCV which will be based on Suzuki's 'Carry' platform. Suzuki's 'Carry' is very popular in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh and will soon be seen on Indian roads too.
“We will soon launch a new lCV and for this the board has also given its approval just two days back. The lCV will be placed in the same segment as Tata Ace. We plan to launch diesel, petrol and CNG versions of the commercial vehicle,” Bhargava said.
As of now, the project is under process and management feels it might take around two years for the lCV to officially hit the markets. Management also said that they expect to the sales to rise due to the good monsoons and hope the momentum will continue as the festival season begins.
Clearing doubts as to whether the company was planning to close their Manesar Plant and move the plant, Bhargava said, “We are not quitting manesar and moving the factory to some other location.”
As far as Gujarat plant goes, he further added that the “boundary wall work is in process and now the engineers from Maruti and Suzuki are in the process of making a detailed plant layout”.
Asked if the lCV would be sold separately or in the same showrooms as its cars, MSI Chief Operating Officer (Marketing & Sales) Mayank Pareek said, “we have not yet decided the strategy for it but in markets like China, Indonesia and Pakistan, Suzuki has both mixed and exclusive showrooms for the Carry.”
In 1983, when the then Maruti Udyog ltd entered the market, it had opened countrywide bookings for its M800 model and the Carry lCV.
“While the M800 received 1.21 lakh bookings, the Carry had only about 2,000. Then we had decided to drop the plans for launching the lCV,” he said.