Thanks to competitive pricing and its best features, Hyundai Venue has crossed 34,000 bookings within a month of its launch in the fiercely competitive but slowing economy. Buyers have to make a down payment of Rs 25,000 for the booking.

“Our new Hyundai model Venue has bucked the slowing trend of car sales in the country and we are confident to overtake Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza as the segment leader soon,” Puneet Anand, Senior General Manager & Group Head, Marketing at Hyundai Motor India told Financial Chronicle.

He said this month the company sold 12,000 units of Venue to its dealerships out of which over 8,000 units were already retailed to aspiring buyers. He said the company had also retailed over 1,000 units in a single day on June 21.

The sales of Maruti Vitara Brezza, which were between 13,000 units to 14,000 units every month, had come down to about 8,000 units last month.

Priced competitively from Rs 6.50 lakh to Rs 10.84 lakh at pan-India showroom, the Venue competes with Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza, Mahindra XUV300, Ford EcoSport and Tata Nexon.

While the company had delivered over 1,000 units of Venue to the Indian customers so far, the carmaker’s first compact SUV has a waiting period of around six to eight weeks, depending on variants and engine- gearbox combination.

The Venue is the first connected car in its segment thanks to the BlueLink connectivity system. The system offers 10 India-only features with a total of 33 connectivity features including geo-fencing, speed alerts, SOS, panic notifications, destination sharing, and road-side assistance.

Launched in the Indian market on May 21, the Hyundai Venue is sold in four engine-gearbox combinations, which includes an 83hp, 1.2-litre petrol manual transmission or MT, a 120hp, 1.0-litre petrol MT/ automatic transmission or AT, and a 90hp, 1.4-litre diesel manual transmission. The Venue is available in six trim levels – the E, S, SX, SX+, SX dual-tone and SX(O).

According to dealer sources, the most popular option appears to be the 1.0-litre petrol engine paired to the 7-speed DCT automatic gearbox. The 1.4-litre diesel is the second-most popular engine choice, while the 1.2 petrol is the least popular, owing to its rather basic equipment list.