Can Maruti Suzuki Shed Its Image Of Being Just A Maker Of Small Cars?

- Debabrata Das & Prerna Lidhoo

For the longest time, the joke in India was you could buy any car as long as it was an Ambassador. The old warhorse ruled the roads for decades with a status so iconic it couldn't be shaken by anything; certainly not the only competition at the time, the Premier Padmini. Until 1983. That's when a new icon was born: the boxy little Maruti 800 that knocked the Amby off the charts and went on to capture the imagination of an entire generation of middle class Indians. The car was tiny and lacked power, but in the days of socialist-era deprivation, it was the most coveted consumer product in the country.

More than three decades on, the once bestselling Maruti 800— which derived its name from the son of the wind god in Hindu mythology—has been retired, spelling the end of an era in India’s automobile history. But its manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki India, still remains the country’s largest selling carmaker: It has sold more than 20 million cars in India over the past three decades and in 2017-18, it accounted for one in every two cars sold in the country. “Suzuki is a small car specialist and coupled with that it has concentrated on the Indian market. This is more than one can say for any other global automotive major. Neither are they small car specialists nor have they concentrated on the Indian market. The end result is what you see,” R.C. Bhargava, the 85-year-old chairman of Maruti Suzuki India, a subsidiary of Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corporation, tells Fortune India.