Captains Speak     

Published: June 15, 2024
Updated: June 15, 2024

Maruti Suzuki India

Record 2 mn vehicles sold in FY24

Maruti Suzuki India, the number one car manufacturer in the country, which achieved sales of over 2 million vehicles during fiscal 2024, establishing a new record, is in expansion mode.

Highlighting the performance of the company during fiscal 2024 Mr Roy and Mr Bharti revealed that the PV industry for the first time crossed the 4 million sales milestone in FY 2023-24. Consequently, India maintained its position as the 3rd largest PV market in the world. The PV market grew by 8.4% yoy in FY2023-24. Growth was lower than last year's 26.7% owing to tapering of pent-up demand. Since the last 3-4 years, there has been a steep shift in consumer preferences towards sports utility vehicles (SUV). This trend continued in FY 2023-24 as well, with SUVs contributing to over 50% of the market.

C.N.G. DEMAND

According to Mr Bharti, in terms of powertrain mix, the better availability of CNG vehicles coupled with an increase in CNG infrastructure helped improve the demand for CNG vehicles. The share of CNG vehicles in the industry further expanded to about 15% in FY2023-24, compared to 10.4% in the previous year. The company has crossed a cumulative production milestone of 30 million units since its inception.

According to Mr Roy, the overall sales volume surpassed 2 million units in a year. It is the first among the PV manufacturers in India to achieve this feat. During FY 2023-24, the company recorded its highest-ever annual sales of 2,135,323 vehicles, which included the highest-ever export of 283,067 vehicles. The company continued to be the top exporter of passenger vehicles in India for the 3rd consecutive year. While exports from the rest of the industry declined by nearly 4%, the company's exports increased 10%.

In FY2023-24, aided by new SUV launches, the company could grow faster than the industry. The 'FRONX' SUV has set a new benchmark in the passenger vehicle category by becoming the only new model launch to clock 1 lakh sales in 10 months. Besides, Grand Vitara became the fastest mid-SUV to touch the 1 lakh sales milestone. The sales of CNG vehicles increased to over 4.8 lakh in FY 2023-24, up 50%. The Intelligent Electric Hybrid technology offered in flagship products such as Grand Vitara and Invicto received a phenomenal response from consumers. Customer preference towards green vehicles increased significantly during the year. The share of sales from green vehicles comprising CNG vehicles, smart hybrids and strong hybrids increased to 42% from 37%. In FY24, the company achieved a milestone of the highestever dispatches of 447,750 vehicles

4 MN TARGET

Mr Bharti added that "Maruti Suzuki 3.0 aims to produce 4 million vehicles a year by FY2030-31, almost double the current levels. On the other hand, given the carbon neutrality requirements, several powertrain technologies like EVs, hybrids, CNG, ethanol, etc., will coexist for a reasonably long period of time. Managing this scale and complexity of production with multiple powertrains, under different managements, will pose several challenges."

Referring to the upcoming project, Mr Bharti revealed that the greenfield project in Kharkhoda, Haryana is also a part of the company's ambitious growth plan. Construction is already in progress at Kharkhoda and the first plant with annual production capacity of 250,000 units is on course to be operational in 2025. The company has space to set up 4 such plants with a total capacity of 1 million units in Kharkhoda. Recently, at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit 2024, the company signed an MoU with the government of Gujarat to set up a new automobile manufacturing facility. This is subject to availability of suitable land and other parameters. The annual production capacity is expected to become one million units with a total investment of Rs 35,000 crore.

The company recorded its highest ever quarterly performance on all the 5 parameters -- overall sales, domestic sales, exports, net sales and net profit. It sold a total of 584,031 vehicles during the quarter, higher by 13.4%. Domestic sales stood at 505,291 units, up by 12.2%. Export sales was at 78,740 units, up 21.7%. It registered net sales of Rs 366,975 million against Rs 308,218 million. Net profit for the quarter was at Rs 38,778 million, up 47.8%. This was on account of higher sales volume, favourable commodity prices, cost reduction efforts and higher non-operating income.