Maruti Suzuki India’s future strategy also could be increasingly dictated by its Japanese parent Suzuki’s ambitions.
NEW DELHI: Not only has the top post at India’s largest car maker passed into the hands of a Japanese for the first time, but Maruti Suzuki India’s future strategy also could be increasingly dictated by its Japanese parent Suzuki’s ambitions.
A day after taking over as managing director of MSI, Shinzo Nakanishi said one of his responsibilities would be to make Maruti Suzuki play a bigger role in Suzuki Motor Company’s (SMC) global operations.
“Of the three million cars that SMC wants to sell worldwide (by 2010), almost 30% have to come from Maruti Suzuki India …. I believe MSI is ready to play a bigger role in Suzuki’s operations and my task will be to make that happen,” Nakanishi said in an e-mail interview with DNA Money.
Since MSI remains focused on the target of making and selling a million cars in India by 2010, Nakanishi’s job should not prove too difficult in contributing to a third of the parent’s sales target by the turn of the decade.
But MSI’s alignment with SMC goes much beyond sales targets. Nakanishi mentioned
SMC’s policy of developing world strategic models — under which two new compact cars, Splash and A Star, are going to be made in India next year for exports to Europe — to stress the point that India will continue to be developed as an export hub.
Nakanishi said MSI has begun to share its “good sales and service practices with other Suzuki companies worldwide and I expect this flow to gain momentum in the next few years”.
His comments on aligning MSI’s objectives with those of SMC assume significance since Nakanishi would continue to serve on the SMC board in a senior capacity while holding MSI MD’s position.
But what about Maruti maintaining its undisputed leadership in the domestic passenger car market in the face of fierce impending competition - from Ratan Tata’s Rs 1 lakh car, the low-cost car from Bajaj-Renault combine, small cars being developed for India by Toyota and Honda?
He brushed aside the impending competition, saying “we have not seen the (competitor) cars. There is no clarity on important aspects like features, performance, safety, emission and others … but looking at the medium term, I believe India offers tremendous opportunity…….. If the China experience is an indication, we should see a spurt in demand for cars in India in the medium term”.
On MSI’s recent attempt at transforming itself from a compact car maker to a company with a complete car portfolio, Nakanishi said: “An indication of this was provided at the Frankfurt Motor Show and again in Tokyo where SMC displayed the Concept Kizashi … with the launch of models like Swift and SX4, MSI has successfully expanded its brand image in India”.
Nakanishi did not answer a question on plans to make diesel engines smaller than the 1.3 litre in India and whether MSI would consider selling diesel engines to domestic manufacturers in future.
And to a question on Suzuki’s intention in the alternate fuel space, he merely said “Suzuki is part of a global partnership in researching next generation fuel cell technology… on hybrids too we have been active”.
b_sindhu@dnaindia.net
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