On the back of record exports last fiscal, Maruti Suzuki India is confident of its overseas shipments crossing 3 lakh units in FY25 as part of gradual scaling up to meet the target of up to 8 lakh units by 2030, according to a senior company official.
The company plans to launch more models in its various export markets that span over 100 countries while also enhancing distribution network, having taken best practices from India such as making bank finance available at dealerships, strengthening service facilities and parts availability to the export markets.
“Till about three years ago our exports were in the range of 1 to 1.2 lakh cars a year. Both as a national vision and as a business ambition, we decided to scale up drastically and from those levels and in 2022-23 we reached about 2.59 lakh units exports and in 2023-24 we completed 2.83 lakh,” Maruti Suzuki India Executive Director Corporate Affairs Rahul Bharti told PTI.
He further said, “The interesting part of this is that it bucked the trend of industry. While the rest of the car industry exports actually shrunk by 3 per cent, Maruti Suzuki was able to grow by about 9.3 per cent to 2.83 lakh units a year. With this 42 per cent of all cars exported from India are from Maruti Suzuki.”
Bharti said the company’s strategy is aligned with the government’s vision under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to step up India’s exports for the country to capture a larger share of the global trade to meet the ambitions of ‘Viksit Bharat’.
“We are not only doing this with existing models. Even for the EV, the start of production of which will be in FY25, we would start export, and export it to advanced markets like Japan and Europe,” he noted.
On the road ahead for exports, he said, “We hope to keep improving it steadily and by 2030 we have a target of 7.5 lakh to 8 lakh units total exports.”
When asked if the company can cross the 3 lakh units mark in exports in FY25, Bharti said, “Yes certainly. It is possible barring any major surprises.”
Sharing the company’s strategy for increasing exports, Bharti said, “We don’t have all the models in all the 100 markets now. Therefore, the way to enhance exports is more model launches in more countries of the world and at the same time more distribution network.”
On the qualitative side, he said, “What we are doing is taking a lot of best practices from India to these export markets.”
He cited examples of making bank finance available at the dealerships, how to give confidence to the customer once the car is sold by providing after-sales service, making easy availability of parts and setting up of customer complaint handling system in order to have more buyers in the overseas markets.
“So all these best practices help in giving more confidence to the customer and it reflects in the number of exports,” he said.
In FY24, Maruti Suzuki posted record exports of 2,83,067 units, up from the previous best of 2,59,333 units in FY23. In FY22 its exports were at 2,38,376 units.
Prior to that in FY21 the company’s overseas shipments were at 96,139 units, while in FY20 it was at 1,02,171 units and in FY19 it stood at 1,08,749 units.
In FY24, Maruti Suzuki’s top ten export markets were South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Chile Mexico, the Philippines, Indonesia and Ivory Coast. Its top export models were Baleno, Dzire, Swift, S Presso, Grand Vitara, Jimny, Celerio and Ertiga.