Maruti Suzuki: History, Developments and Future Plan

Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL), India's No.1 car makers has said that they will continue selling small cars and will never manufacture the premium segment in the near future. Maruti Suzuki dominates the small car segment with Alto, WagonR and Swift, which are among the five best-selling car models in India.



RC Bhargava, the chairman of Maruti Suzuki India confirmed the future strategy. He said that neither Maruti (MSIL) nor Suzuki (Corporation) will manufacture premium segment cars. Small cars will remain the largest segment in India and they are concentrating to be a first-class player (market leader) in this segment. “We are in the business for the bottom segment”, he added.



Maruti exports its models to several countries but the exported cars were branded as Suzuki only. Maruti Suzuki A star is sold as the Suzuki Alto across the world. As R C Bhargava stated, in the new market strategy Suzuki will have no problem in promoting Maruti brand. So the cars will be sold under the brand name Maruti Suzuki.

He added that there was still uncertainty in the car market with both petrol and diesel cars hard to sell. He told that 2013 will be difficult for the Industry that he expect a single digit growth. The 2012 was not a good year and growth of the that year would be around six percent.

On 2012 July 18th Maruti's Manesar plant was hit by violence. The company dismissed those workers accused of causing violence and was reopened on 2012 August 21st. The police in their first Investigation Report(FIR) claimed that Manesar violence was the result of a planned violence by a section of workers and union leaders.

While the history of Maruti Suzuki is concerned, more than million units of cars have been sold so far. Maruti 800, launched in 1983 was India's largest selling compact car till 2004. The term “Maruti” is usually used to refer to compact car segment since large no of Maruti 800s were sold in Indian market.

Maruti Suzuki is listed on Bombay Stock Exchange(BSE) and National Stock Exchange of India(NSE). Suzuki motor corporation, the parental company is the global leader in small and compact cars for the three decades. Almost 75 thousand employees are employed directly by Maruti Suzuki and it's partners. J D Power Asia Pacific (an American based global marketing information services firm) has been rated Maruti suzuki as first in customer satisfaction among all car makers in India from 1999 to 2009.

Maruti Suzuki's manufacturing facilities are located at Gurgaon and Maneser in Delhi. They have a combined capacity to produce over 14,50,000 units annually. In order to increase production in future, they have purchased another piece of land in Gujarat, one is offered by government and other one is directly acquired by them with some negotiations by government.

Now let's wait for the Maruti Suzuki to boost Indian auto market where the companies like Renault-Nissan, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) and Honda Motor Corp have reversed their expansion plans.