Mumbai : Hoping to be third time lucky, country's second-largest carmaker, Hyundai Motor India, is launching sports utility vehicle Santa Fe in an attempt to capture a slice of the highly competitive SUV market, said a senior company official. To be priced in the range of Rs 22-24 lakh, Hyundai is targeting the festive season in October for the launch.

"We will launch Sante Fe in October-November, ahead of the festive season. If volumes pick up, then we will consider assembling the vehicle here," said Arvind Saxena, director, (marketing & sales), Hyundai Motor India. The seven-seater SUV, as against the earlier five-seaters, will be powered by a 2.2-litre diesel engine, and initially the company plans to import it as completely-built units.

The Korean auto major had earlier launched its SUVs-Terracan and Tuscon-but withdrew them from the Indian market after the SUVs went in for a `model change' globally.

Hyundai Motor India is well entrenched in the budget segment with Santro, i10, i20. However, some of its premium products such as Sonata and Elantra have not met with much success. While the company has stopped retailing the Elantra, it plans to bring the new Sonata by the year-end. "We intend to give significant focus to our premium product category with the launch of the Santa Fe, and then follow it up with other models, said Mr Saxena.

The SUV segment is the fastest-growing segment in the Indian luxury car market, with a growth of more than 18-20 % coming from the premium segment. The recently-launched Toyota Fortuner, which dominates the premium SUV market, will take on the Santa Fe. Some of the new challengers in the SUV space-Skoda Yeti and Nissan Murano-will compete with existing players like Honda CR-V, Chevrolet Captiva, Ford Endeavour, Nissan X Trail, Mitsubishi Outlander. "There is a huge untapped market for premium SUVs and every car player is looking at launching models," said Abdul Majeed, auto practice leader, PwC.