Maruti Suzuki Customers to Face Delay in Deliveries, Jimny and Fronx Add to List of Pending Orders

The newly launched Maruti Suzuki Jimny SUV received 9,000 bookings in the first 9 days after the bookings for off-roader SUVs opened after unveiling at Auto Expo 2023.

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Maruti Suzuki India's pending orders increased this month to almost 4.05 lakh units as steady reservations continued to come in, and the recently released SUVs Jimny and Fronx contributed to the totals. Bookings for Jimny have reached over 11,000 units, while those for Fronx are now at about 4,000 units. 3.63 lakh vehicles were still on backorder from customers as of the third quarter that concluded in December 2022, of which 1.19 lakh orders were for recently introduced models.

"We are at around 4,05,000 bookings (at present), which are pending, and that means that we are seeing in the flow of bookings and of inquiries at a pretty good level," Maruti Suzuki India Senior Executive Officer, Marketing & Sales, Shashank Srivastava told PTI.

Compared to January 2022, the inquiry is higher by 2 percent and bookings by 1 percent in the same month this year, he said. The increase in pending orders has also been accelerated by the company's two newly introduced SUVs -- Jimny and Fronx -- which were unveiled at the Auto Expo 2023 earlier this month, Srivastava said.

"The response has been great, especially for the Jimny, as also for the Fronx...We are getting bookings for the Jimny at the rate of around 1,000 per day. We have so far got over 11,000 orders for Jimny," Srivastava said.

Also for Fronx, the booking rate is around 300 per day, totalling close to 4,000 strictly, he added. Maruti Suzuki India has not announced the prices of these two new models, and these are slated to hit the market this "spring".

Earlier, the company had stated that with the improvement in semiconductor supplies, it expects less hit on pro, thereby reducing the number of pending orders. In the third quarter, a shortage of electronic components impacted the company's production by about 46,000 vehicles. In 2022, Maruti Suzuki sold 15.76 lakh units against 13.64 lakh units in 2021, a growth of almost 16 percent.

With PTI Inputs