Suzuki To Build More Cars In India Than Back Home
India is supposed to be the world’s next growth market. For one company, this is already more than true: For Japan’s Suzuki. The Maruti Suzuki joint venture owns more than 50 percent of India’s market. And soon, Suzuki will build more cars in India than back home in Japan.
Suzuki will increase its production capacity in India to 1.45 million units a year in 2012, topping its output in Japan for the first time, The Nikkei [sub] reports.
Maruti Suzuki will upgrade its two existing factories and build a third. Construction began in March, the plant will be able to build 250,000 units a year when it begins comes on-line in spring 2012.
Meanwhile, Suzuki’s partner Volkswagen is thinking about introducing a smaller car than their Polo to India, the Economic Times reports.
With 1.43m units sold in 2009, India is no China – yet. Growth is expected to continue on a sedate rate of about 14 percent a year. India’s car market is seen at 4 million units in 2015.
Comments
Join the conversation
What the hell are those two doing in that picture? It looks like he's trying to prevent her from launching herself into the ocean - presumably in desperation to avoid having to ride in that car.
He's the salesman, she's the customer. They have just reached the turn-around point of the dealership's test-drive route. I think she's hailing a cab.
Apperently, second and third world countries like Suzuki's small cars. I wonder when the US and Europe are going to join them.
Suzuki's Indian operations are a key part of their global strategy and India is where Suzuki will be building most of its cars intended for developing markets. Maruti's foothold in India was established a couple decades ago when the Indian government invited Suzuki to create a joint venture to build "indigenous" Indian cars. Since then the gov't has divested all of its shares and the company pretty much operates as a subsidiary of Suzuki which now owns a majority share.