Maruti’s premium play turns ten: Did it truly build a brand or just a better showroom?

Ten years after launched to shed its longstanding image as the common man’s carmaker – and win back aspirational buyers who were upgrading to rival brands – it finds itself at an inflection point. They are preparing what it is internally being called Nexa 2.0, a significant evolution in the brand’s experience and identity.

Partho Banerjee, senior executive director – sales and marketing, , and the architect of Nexa’s strategy, says the company is working on an AIintegrated experience for a younger, more demanding buyer.

When Banerjee conceived Nexa in 2015, the brief was ambitious.

Showroom managers were sent to fivestar hotels to absorb the finer nuances of customer experience. The concept of a relationship manager, a single point of contact for the buyer, borrowed from private banking, was unheard of in auto retail. Delivery was choreographed – with the customer’s chosen song playing.

Rivals benchmarked against it. It was, by any measure, a leap – one that fundamentally changed how cars are sold.

A decade later, the numbers present a mixed picture. Nexa’s contribution to Maruti’s overall sales slipped to 27.6% in FY26, its lowest in three years, from 30.8% the previous year, according to data from automotive data analytics firm JATO Dynamics. Absolute volumes, too, declined for the first time post-Covid, from 543,050 units in FY25 to 503,881 in FY26, even as the premium car market stayed buoyant.

Banerjee attributes it to capacity constraints rather than weakening demand. High-demand models like the Fronx are on a waiting period, and production lines cannot be scaled overnight. “For the kind of demand we are seeing, our capacity is more than 100% utilised,” he says. Suzuki has a robust order book of 190,000 units, the company said in an earnings call recently.

A Question of Numbers
Drill deeper and a more nuanced picture emerges. Of the nine models Nexa has launched, just three – Baleno, Fronx, and Grand – account for 85% of total sales volume. The S-Cross has been discontinued; the Ignis is reportedly being phased out.

, president, JATO Dynamics, sees the next chapter as a product opportunity: “A dual channel strategy has helped Maruti Suzuki straddle wider price segments. However, feeding two channels also requires a dual product pipeline, life-cycle management thinking, and a capex plan. Dual channels need to be fed by product.”

Banerjee does not shy away from admitting over dependence on a few models but argues the logic is sound. “The Jimny is a lifestyle product – expecting Baleno-like numbers from it is not fair. The purpose of having many models is to allow the customer to upgrade as their income and lifestyle improve and stay within our network,” he says.

The multi-purpose vehicle Invicto points to where opportunity is the sharpest. Priced from ₹24.97 lakh, the car sold just 3,247 units in FY26, while its twin, Toyota’s Innova Hycross, commands a healthier order book – evidence that there is a ceiling to what the brand name can command at higher price points today.

Brand strategist Avik Chattopadhyay is blunt about why: “The Maruti Suzuki badge represents mainstream ecoperformance. Low cost of ownership is a brand promise. Specialist vehicles like S-Cross or Jimny require different wiring for positioning and sales.”

A Difficult Balance
Nexa’s delicate balance is between premiumness and numbers. A dealer proprietor traces the problem to a single decision. “When Nexa started, the S-Cross and Ciaz models gave the range a premium feel. Customers were demanding that experience. Then Baleno was added to the range, and it went from premium to mass overnight. They chose volume over brand.” According to the dealer, Nexa was originally meant to be India’s answer JATO to Lexus – an aspirational premium subbrand. “If you’re selling 5,000–7,000 cars a month, that’s a niche. If you want to sell 40,000, it’s not a niche any more. Then why have a separate channel at all?” he asks.

It is a question Maruti was aware of. Amit Kaushik, founder of automotive analytics firm MobiDx AI, says the decision to bring Baleno into Nexa was driven more by commercial compulsion.

Early Nexa outlets were struggling with low sales volumes, making them financially unviable. “The Baleno helped with profitability and till date outlets remain highly profitable,” he says.

The dual-channel construct has served one practical purpose well: with Maruti retailing close to 17 nameplates, housing them all under a single roof would have made for an unwieldy, diluted experience. Nexa has given each nameplate the space and context it needs.

The Big Question
But the question of brand identity remains, as Chattopadhyay sees it: “Nexa was pure in concept but polluted in implementation. The customer goes to a Nexa to buy a Grand Vitara, not because it is a Nexa. If it were available in the Arena, they would have gone there. Nexa as a brand has no core purpose – no wajood (presence).”

What will sharpen that identity, the dealer argues, is widening the experiential gap between Nexa and Arena.

“Earlier there was a visible difference – in the experience, the staff, the feel. Now it’s largely the same showroom, same salesman, same process. The only difference is the car price.” That is something the next iteration of Nexa will need to address.

Mahindra & Mahindra, which has aggressively moved up the price curve, shows that premium equity is ultimately built through product and brand, not distribution architecture alone.

Banerjee pushes back on a volume-driven reading of Nexa’s performance. The average selling price in the Nexa range is nearly 40% higher than in Arena, and the average buyer age has dropped from 40 years in 2017–18 to 37 years today, with the number of first-time buyers rising sharply.

“If more affluent and younger first-time buyers are coming in, that shows we are reaching the right customers. Our promise was always to give a premium experience and win back customers who were upgrading away from Maruti.”
If not for Nexa, he adds, Maruti Suzuki would not have succeeded in hitting different price points with similar products, like the sport utility vehicles Grand Vitara (Nexa) and (Arena).

Nexa 2.0, then, is an attempt to take a solid foundation and build something with a sharper edge. Maruti’s answer will define the marque’s second decade.