How Maruti goofed up with the Jimny: An owner's analysis

A thorough rework of the pricing and fresh marketing is the need of the hour.

BHPian Samba recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Let us do a step-by-step analysis of how Maruti goofed up with the Jimny.

They showed the car in the Jan 2023 Auto Expo, and started taking the bookings for the vehicle before revealing the price. Till June they got a decent number of bookings.

At that time the speculative price for the Jimny was that it should start from approximately Rs 9.99L on the road.

But once Maruti got a good number of bookings they got greedy and overpriced the car. The attitude of the Nexa dealers then was like take it or leave it. Even I was looking for the Jimny at that time. When I saw I needed to pay Rs 16.30L OTR to buy the Jimny in June/July last year, I paid the road tax for my Duster AWD and retained the Duster.

As we see everywhere, dealers stocked up the Jimny a lot, taking bookings on fake customer names to get the car allotted for them, so they could sell it by asking for a premium or make the customers buy compulsory accessories from them. But the money we earn at the end of the day is our hard-earned money. Seeing the pricing too close to the Thar many people simply backed off.

By September the sales came down and the dealers had unsold stock.

During December, MSIL realized that the number of 2023 manufactured unsold cars is huge and they suddenly gave a discount of 1-2 lakh rupees. Then the pricing was acceptable though not totally VFM. At that time many people including me bought the Jimny.

Then they suddenly announced from 2024 onwards the original pricing would be back, & it was heard that MSIL would send the car to the dealers only on booking.

So people who trusted Maruti again bought the car by paying full price from Jan to June.

During June the marketing team up MSIL realized they needed volume and they suddenly slashed the price by 3L.

Now people who bought this car in the first half of 2024 feel cheated! In the end, it is Maruti's product and they can even price it at Rs 25L and then give a discount of Rs 15L and bring the price down to 10L. They have every right to do it.

Now they are saying they will give this discount till the 15th of this month! Then people will again have to buy the Jimny by paying full price, and then again during the year's end Maruti will decide to throw in some discounts and the people who will buy in between will pay a few lacs more!

It's funny how in a year the same car was sold for 12L, 14L, and 16L! This can be a very good case study for the MBA students on how not to screw a product!

Jimny comes in only a petrol 4WD variant and this car is destined to sell less. It will never sell like a Fronx or Brezza. The target customers for Jimny are fewer & MSIL being a mass market player they are looking for volumes from Jimny too.

Their advertisement for this product was wrong too. They only highlighted the off-road part. They have never shown how this car can be used as a daily driver's car too!

Now the way they are giving discounts and bringing back the old price will screw up this product further. For god's sake, Maruti should admit their mistake and rework the pricing. Make the current discounted price the permanent price, and invest in proper ads showing the capabilities of this car other than the offroading part. Then slowly expect a decent increase in sales. 500-1000 units per month will be more than enough for this car. This car can never sell like a Thar. Thar has diesel, a 2WD, a convertible top, and a wow factor and in India, the Thar is a much more established brand. I have heard people commenting on the Jimny as mini Thar. This says a lot about how successful the Thar is in India.

A thorough rework of the pricing and fresh marketing is the need of the hour.

Plus few niggles such as the braking issue at higher altitudes, the scratch marks on the propeller shaft have been reported for a long time and MSIL is silent about it. This is what people do not expect from MSIL!

Why do people buy MSIL cars?

The car will be value for money.

Jimny without discount is not even close to this!

The car will provide a good resale value.

People who bought the Jimny for Rs 16L already lost 3-4L by a month!

The car will be niggle free.

Few niggles have been reported and Maruti did nothing to address that.

A few higher-ups from MSIL must have royally used their brains to think out of the box on how they can fleece the customers to make some quick profit. But in the end, they failed miserably, & they ruined the market value of a product that so many people wanted to buy for the past so many years! This needs special marketing skills!

A small tip - Learn how to set the initial pricing right and hike it with the increase in demand for the product from Mahindra!

Read BHPian comments for more insights and information.