Rural India has become a life-saver for country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India as the same has contributed about 30 per cent of their total sales this fiscal, which is expected to go up only in time to come.
“Rural market has become a life-saver for us. We have been working in rural India for the past 4-5 years continuously because we knew next growth would come from here only. While urban market is either stagnant or declining, rural market has been growing during this financial year at 18 per cent. Rural sales contributed about 30 per cent of our total sales in the April-November period this fiscal,” said Maruti Suzuki Chairman RC Bhargava.
“In the next four months this 30 per cent will go up to may be 32 per cent. But, the urban markets are not going up,” added Bhargava while admitting he did not find any signs of revival in passenger vehicle sales.
Talking in detail about rural market, Bhargava said that had it not been the rural market, the company would have had an even tougher time and would have been in similar mess like the rest of the industry as demand in urban areas has slowed down by 5-6 per cent.
“We have been giving emphasis on rural markets. last year, we had covered 44,000 villages and till November this year, we have our presence in 60,000 villages and by March next year, we will have presence in one lakh out of a total of 6.51 lakh villages in India,” informed Bhargava.
The company has a total of 700 rural outlets, which are accompanied by workshops that are authorised to carry out repairs under warranty to an extent. In addition, MSI has 650 mobile vans that has helped in servicing even at the customers’ home, he added.
While commenting on the overall market situation, Bhargava said the market continues to be down because of overall condition of economy and the political situation, which could improve only after the General Election.
“In terms of retail sales, for the fiscal till November we are one per cent up from that of last year. We are hopeful that we will be able to match last fiscal’s numbers,” he said.
Commenting on exports, Bhargava said the company will fall short marginally due to changing policies in some of the key markets like Sri lanka and Algeria.
The company, however, is expecting December to break monthly record in terms of retail sales with about 1.2 lakh units, company, MSI COO (Marketing and Sales) Mayank Pareek said.
“Apart from discounts, which are about Rs17,000 on an average, exchange offers and customers advancing purchases ahead of January is boosting our December sales,” Pareek said.
On the demand for diesel passenger vehicles, he said for the industry overall share has come down to 54 per cent this fiscal as compared to 58 per cent.