Smooth ride for Maruti Suzuki in 2009-2010 as company posts sales record
Proving that it still continues to rule customers’ minds in India and also overseas, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd has come up trumps with regard to sales during fiscal 2010. The car maker has reported to have sold as many as 10,18,365 vehicles during the period.
Significantly enough, Maruti’s feat is a record, considering that this is the first time an Indian car company has sold over a million units in a single financial year. The sales break up is such that 8,70,790 units were sold in the domestic market, while 1,47,575 units were sold overseas.
Maruti Suzuki India has said that the total sales numbers in the 2009-10 fiscal grew 29 per cent over the previous financial year. Total sales in 2008-09 had stood at 792,167 units.
For March 2010 alone, the car maker had sold a total of 95,123 units. This is a growth of 11 per cent over the March 2009 figure of 85,669 units. In the domestic market, 79,530 units changed hands during the month. Meanwhile the export figure for the same month was the highest ever for he company, at 15,593 units. This number surpassed the previous highest monthly exports recorded in August 2009 when it sold 14,847 units.
Among the most sought after models, the Suzuki A-Star scored high in the export market. For FY10, the A-Star compact car posted over 1.27 lakh export sales in the fiscal, and was exported across Europe, including United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands. The Maruti models also made successful forays into new markets such as South Africa, Hong Kong, Australia and Norway during the year. Fiscal 2010 also proved to be yet another land mark for the company when it was able to roll out its one millionth car of the year on March 23.
With demand on the rise, the car maker is now fast sprucing up facilities so that production is pushed up. Maruti Suzuki India is looking at a production capacity of 1.25 million units by 2012. The company has made an investment to the tune of Rs 17 billion at its Manesar facility in a view to up output on a major scale.
Maruti Suzuki currently has a number of cars catering to the Indian market. The company has plans to launch the Suzuki Kiashi, a car that can compete with the Honda Civic or Chevrolet Cruze towards the end of 2010. In January 2010, the company launched the Maruti Eeco MPV which has seen great interest in the low end of the market.