Suzuki confident Maruti will increase India market share

Suzuki – which aims to grow global volumes by 6.2% or 186,000 passenger vehicles in the ongoing fiscal – expects its subsidiary Maruti Suzuki to outperform competition in the local market this fiscal.

“The market growth for Indian automobiles is expected to be +5-7% year on year, and our company’s Indian automobile sales are expected to be higher,” SMC said in a presentation to investors.

The company’s passenger vehicle sales in India went up by 20.5% to 1.65 million units in the fiscal ended March 31, ahead of home market Japan where volumes increased by 11.7% in the same period. With this, the share of Maruti Suzuki in parent Suzuki Motor Corporation’s global sales rose to 54.8%, from 50.4% in FY22. The subsidiary’s share in total global production of automobiles for SMC was even higher at about 60%, up from 58.8% the previous year. Contribution to net sales, meanwhile, rose by over 600 basis points to 40.8% in the period under consideration.

To be sure, constraints in availability of semiconductors and lack of products in the SUV segment earlier in the year did impact Maruti Suzuki’s share in the local market. However, SMC held, “We will try to recover our market share by introducing SUVs.”

Overall, Maruti Suzuki had a share of about 41% in the Indian passenger vehicle market at the close of last fiscal.

The company’s share in the SUV segment, though, has been on an upswing with the introduction of new models. Maruti Suzuki’s share in the category grew six times and stood at 17.4% in March 2023, compared to 3.9% in July 2022, prior to the introduction of the new Brezza and Grand Vitara. Bookings remain strong for the Fronx and the soon-to-be launched Jimny, SMC said.Given the potential in the market here, Maruti Suzuki is looking at investing about Rs 45,000 crore to double production capacity to 4 million units by the end of the decade to meet consumer demand in the local market and ramp up exports from the country, ET reported last week.

Maruti Suzuki is targeting recouping lost market share over the next few years with a slew of new launches across the fast-growing sports utility vehicle and electric car segments. In a recent interaction Maruti Suzuki chairman R C Bhargava said, “Our intent is to get back our market share as close as possible to the 50% we have had in the past.”