From ix25 to Creta, the journey was not long and the compact SUV was one of the most awaited car for this year. It became more interesting when Hyundai tried to build up a notion that they will price it aggressively! However, it has all ended up in a damp squib!
Back in December last year, Rakesh Srivastava, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing Hyunda India, had assured the masses that “they will surprise the market with their compact SUV’s prices“. Here is his word he had given in an interview to the Financial Express.
Whenever we launch a product, we always target above 90% localisation. The same will be for our compact SUV. We are fairly confident that we will surprise the market with our prices.
So the prices indeed ended up surprising almost everyone but not in the most positive ways! It begins to appear that Hyundai went extra greedy and was on cloud nine with the super success of its new Elite i20 and the initial bookings and response to Creta.
To his credit, we hope and believe Rakesh Srivastava must have tried to convince his bosses to keep prices of over 90 percent localized Creta realistic, because no one in his pure senses will claim an ‘exciting‘ price tag and the announcement at the podium during launch ends up ensuring the product is the costliest in the market in its respective segment!
Yes, Creta is the costliest compact SUV in the market in an absolute contrast to what he said. It is significantly higher priced than Duster, Terrano (both of which are already not applauded for their prices), EcoSport and others.
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Now consider this, Duster is already being sold at some handsome discounts which increases the gap further making it a tempting prospect. So, once the initial hoopla dies down, we will love to see how far off is Hyundai from their target for Creta.
