THE BIG SUV BET

Maruti Suzuki plans to ride the shift towards sports utility vehicles to regain 50% market share.

- KARAN DHAR

WHEN SUZUKI MOTOR CORPORATION entered India in a joint venture with the central government over four decades ago, nobody could have predicted that one day it would account for 40% of all cars sold in the country. The Japanese company, known for its small and affordable cars, was a perfect partner for the government, which was looking to roll out a people’s car. After the Indian economy opened in 1991, Suzuki increased its stake in Maruti, which shed its public sector tag in 1992. It became a multinational in 2002 when Suzuki took majority control.

Cut to 2025. Maruti Suzuki is India’s top carmaker by volume. It sells more cars than the next three carmakers—Hyundai Motor India, Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra—combined, and contributes 2.3% to India’s GST collections.

While the carmaker took over 40 years to reach a capacity of two million units, it has set an ambitious target of ramping up volumes to four million by FY31. “The first two million took 40 years. But in the next six-seven years, we would increase our capacity to four million,” Hisashi Takeuchi, managing director and CEO of Maruti Suzuki, tells Fortune India. Takeuchi, who worked closely with the late Osamu Suzuki, says the biggest lesson he learnt from Suzuki was to never give up.

Maruti Suzuki is setting up two greenfield plants, one in Haryana’s Kharkhoda and the other in Gujarat. It is planning a capex of ₹1.25 lakh crore till FY31, betting on low car penetration in India. “In India, there are 30 cars per 1,000 people. Japan, U.S. and Europe have more than 600 cars per 1,000 people. This means we have a big opportunity to grow the market. We are going to introduce a lot of new products in India,” says Takeuchi.