Maruti Suzuki India Limited plans to enter into Light Commercial Vehicles segment which is available on both CNG and diesel variants. The name of this LCV is not decided yet and it will take time about two years.
Maruti Suzuki India, Chairman, R C Bhargava said “It was planned in our original agreement (with SMC) in 1982 that the Carry LCV would be launched in India but at that time, due to poor response from the market, it was shelved. Now the situation has changed and the board has given approval to go ahead for launching the LCV in India”.
He said, “In the last two years, we have seen a demand for such LCVs growing in India and we think we can offer a superior product in the segment as Suzuki has been doing for years globally.”
“Our engineers are working on adapting the diesel engine that we have licensed from Fiat to be used in the LCV. This will be a pure goods carrier”
“While the M800 received 1.21 lakh bookings, the Carry had only about 2,000. Then we had decided to drop the plans for launching the LCV”
He also said, “The working environment in India for doing business, not only in the automobile sector but also others, is not happening…even the FMCG business, which is the least recessionary, has been declining over the last few quarters. So you can imagine how it is affecting those who sell high value durables”
“We think there will be some improvement in demand as the monsoon has been good. Rural sales, which account for 30 per cent of our total sales, is expected to grow and the festive season sales will also help”
He added, “We have sustainable cost saving plans, including implementation of quality circle suggestions from employees. Last fiscal, the saving from it was around Rs 350 crore from implementation of a total of 3.18 lakh suggestions from a number of employees”