Exide batteries comes with 18 months of warranty and always lasts longer then 2 years.With regular city driving can easily pull upto two and half years or more.
May be a bit costly but its worth it.
I had used cheap non exide batteries which had started giving trouble starting as early as six months.In Manual transmission cars, cheaper alternatives may work for sometime but if you drive an auto-transmission go for the best in the market.
It doesnt matter if you dont go for maintenance free batts ,normal batteries of a good brand can easily match the performance.All you need to do is to take trouble to have a look at your electrolyte level periodically.Even Toyota mostly puts normal batts in their new vehicles and not the maint free types.