This is not at all an authentic rumour or has any base at all and is solely my wild guess. Its absolutely baseless but just my personal maybe scenario.
Maybe:
They launched it at an introductory price of 5,249,000 (Ex-factory) which was not at all an increase for a new model keeping in mind they invested a lot and the improvement is massive. Its actually not just an improvement but a new vehicle from scratch altogether. So companies increase prices to cover their R&D costs.
If you guys remember at some point the old Fortuner was 5.8 million which was then reduced later because the model wasn't a success. Most probably that could be the targeted figure Indus was ideally looking at. But instead they gave this all new vehicle in a nominal increase for what it is. The idea behind that could be let's prove its success and market it on low price as an investment for the future price hike so they removed a few goodies like Push Start and tail gate close button. The reason could be introductory marketing strategy at a lower cost and more than that, they left it out themselves categorically to find something to add an year later as an improvement. Sooner or later they will for sure add these things like they did in Grande when they added climate control and immobilizer and then again after some time added front cam. Maybe add a front cam in Fortuner as well.
Bhai agar har cheez shuru main de dain toh baad main add karne ke liyay kum bachta hai. They need excuses to relaunch with improvements every now and then so they have an excuse for refreshing their marketing campaign and prices.
The lack of these things has claimed some criticism and they already knew it. But if they had given everything in the beginning how would have they found stuff to add later and increase price.
All these complicated reasons of increasing price, adding features later and giving an incentive of more additions might be the reason.
But I am too happy missing these things without paying the price hike later. Atleast I got a Fortuner in initial stages of its release at an introductory price. They will add stuff worth 50k maybe and increase the price 500k.
I repeat again, my above statements are baseless and purely my predictions.
I am sure @Dawar will also be able to shed some light on my theory.