Maruti Suzuki is the largest automobile maker in the country, and has been like that for a long time. Currently, it has a 43 percent market share, with its closest competitor, Hyundai, a long way behind at close to 16 percent. While its rival companies are giving Maruti much more increased competition than before, one area where it is unparalleled is the rural sector. Nearly 40 percent of total sales come from the rural markets. So what makes Maruti the go to choice outside of the metro cities? We take a closer look at some of the reasons.
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Maruti Suzuki Sales and Service Network
Maruti Suzuki currently has India’s largest sales and service network, with over 4,000 service touchpoints including 235 ‘Service-On-Wheels’. From a rural perspective, the brand has over 1700 outlets in the country. The company has adopted the philosophy of ‘Go Local’ with 12,500 specially trained dealership personnel called RDSE (Resident Dealer Sales Executives). These RDSEs hail from the same place as the particular showroom or service center network who know the culture and traditions. They are specially trained to understand local customers’ needs and maintain interpersonal relationships.
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Maruti Suzuki Sales Figures and Favorite Models
Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Director (Marketing and Sales), Maruti, recently commented to certain media outlets, “For us, the rural markets did better than urban markets last year. Rural markets have now been outperforming urban markets since 2007 when we started monitoring the sales separately, except for a couple of years,”
According to him, in FY 2008-09, rural markets accounted for only 10 percent of total sales for Maruti. Today that number has increased to 40.9 percent over the last fiscal year with 5,83,300 units sold. Some of the best-selling models include the Maruti Alto 800, Wagon R, Eeco, Dzire and the Swift while the brand has also started introducing its Nexa premium sales network to boost sales further.
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Maruti Suzuki Expansion and Future Growth
As per media reports, Shashank Srivastava has also stated that Maruti is looking to expand further into India’s rural markets. The brand is now looking to increase its sales operations to cover the remaining over 2 lakh cities.
Maruti expects the current growth to continue as rising rural incomes and increased need for vehicles mean that demand will only increase. Currently, the brand is seeing an YoY growth of around 25 percent in comparison to 21 percent urban growth. The company is also building its network with the aim of ‘Ghar Ghar Mein Maruti’ to tap into rural India’s massive potential. The company has also stated that to engage deeper, it has designed various local-level engagement initiatives.
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