India’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India unveiled‘Smart Finance,’ a digital platform that will offer buyers real-time financing options from multiple financiers, including HDFC Bank,, Yes Bank, ICICI Bank and Cholamandalam Finance, as it looks to woo customers to push sales.
“Car financing is a very important part of car buying because 80% of the cars are sold to finance,” said Shashank Srivastava, executive director (marketing & sales). Maruti Suzuki India Limited said, adding that as per a recent report — Auto Gear Shift India, by Google — while 95% the customers search online before they make a decision of buying a car, 56% of customers also check their finance options digitally.
While currently the company has eight financers on-board, including HDFC Bank, Yes Bank, ICCI Bank, IndusInd Bank, Cholamandalam Finance, AU Small Finance Bank, Mahindra Finance and Kotak Mahindra Prime, this number will soon go up to about 17, he added.
Kenichi Ayukawa, MD and CEO, Maruti Suzuki India said, “This digital service offers easy financing options and is completely transparent at each stage of the loan process. Among other advantages, the customer gets to customise the EMI, by choosing the loan tenure and interest rate and select a preferred down-payment scheme.
The platform Smart Finance will act as a facilitator between the customer and the financier, and will enable buyers to compare multiple scenarios for his car loan to make a choice with regards to loan partner, tenure, among other things, digitally.
This will improve transparency around the loan offers and related charges, the company said, adding that it is the first OEM to an online, end-to-end, real time car finance service facility. The platform is currently available for its Nexa customers across 30 cities, but will later be extended to Arena customers as well.
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