On Friday, Toyota Kirloskar Motor India Ltd made the declaration of its latest launched Urban Cruiser, which starts at Rs 8.40 lakh up to Rs 11.30 lakh. The cruiser is its primarily launched compact sports utility vehicle. The latest offering will be up for competition with Kia’s Sonet, Hyundai’s Venue, Maruti Suzuki’s Vitara Brezza and Mahindra and Mahindra’s XUV 300. It has been observed since the previous decade that the domestic preference of urban customers has turned to the sport utility vehicle segment. Car-markers are nowadays targeting shares in this quickly growing demand.

Mass market vehicle segments domestically will witness expansion in base value with companies such as Toyota making their latest entry into the segment, as well as the commonly known premium offerings such as Innova Crysta and Fortuner. Glanza was launched last year as the first premium hatchback, which till date has seen wholesales nearing 30,000. Both Glanza and Urban Cruiser are a rebadged version of Suzuki Motor Corp’s Baleno hatchback and Vitara Brezza compact SUV. Under the alliance between Toyota and Suzuki, both companies will enter new segments by rebadging each other’s existing products and merging in the creation of new ones. Toyota Kirloskar Motor sales and marketing senior vice-president Naveen Soni discussed the high importance of the compactness in the sport utility vehicle sub-segment, seeing the increase in market share in the overall passenger vehicle segment to 14% in 2019 from just 1% in 2013.

“In the Indian market, most of the volume is there in the lower price points. The Glanza journey was also significant for us since we didn’t have any presence in that segment. It helped us get some insights into the lower end of the market, and there are almost 30000 customers of Glanza today,” added Soni. The compact SUV segment is predicted to have an intensifying competition following Nissan’s Magnite and another product from its alliance partner Renault undergoing launch. The 2021 segment will further see the commencement of Tata Motors‘ code titled HBX, being its second offering.