Maruti Suzuki is all after ‘Beyond A Million’

Maruti Suzuki, the leading car maker of India seems to be too keen on meeting its latest motto ‘Beyond A Million’. In its effort to maintain its already existing 50% market share and to grow across all demographics, the company has plunged into an aggressive marketing spree. Recently a leading newspaper had a new add by the company saying “ I’m Young. But When It’s About Spending Money, I’m No Kid”, the tag line truly reflecting on the company's target motto.

Under the charge of R C Bhargava, Chairman of the company, Maruti Suzuki India is looking forward to involve into growth strategies and is making sure that the suppliers are able to double their output in the near future. India is developing into the most responsive automobile markets in the world which is pulling auto makers like MSI to indulge in greater strategizing.

Parameters like growth patterns, rising disposable incomes, lower borrowing costs and finally a robust economy throw light on the growth curve India is following and are giving rise to speculations that the market would double in size in the coming years.

The company held a meeting with all its 60 key vendors with the sole motto of enhancing the production capacities n which vendors play the  most significant role. The strategy opted this time by MSI is to convince vendors for capacity expansion before the actual orders are placed in the market. This would help vanish the lag that is resulted due to the vendors waiting for actual orders.

This was the first time in the history of Maruti Suzuki India that it was collaborating with the vendors on capacity and investment issues. The company assured its vendors that it would support them if they face a fund-raising problem in the process of capacity expansion. After touching the mark of One-million car sales last year, Maruti is keen on investing 42 billion rupees ($923 million) in its research and development wing.

The company has already started capacity increase drive in its manufacturing units in Northern India and this new line of activities is expected to raise annual vehicle output by 25% to 1.25 million units by April 2012. In order to make heavy savings the company has asked all its vendors to reduce on their component costs by at least 3%, that could perhaps lead to savings of approximately Rs 700 crore.

R C Bhargava however commented that the savings could hardly help as the input costs are increasing on am escalating scale, which would ultimately result in higher Car prices. The company is also working towards imbibing more cost efficient engines that would emit lesser carbon-di-oxide, he added. He negated all rumours that the company would contract with Volkswagen for production at the Chakkan facility.