After establishing its foothold in urban and semi-urban markets, Maruti Udyog, the country's top car maker, has embarked on an ambitious drive in villages and entered into an understanding with regional rural banks for car finance to push sales.The company, which early this year began executing its pan-India plan, has already started seeing the results. "We have already sold 2,700 cars and generated about 20,000 enquiries through the rural scheme that was started in April," Jagdish Khattar, managing director, Maruti, said.Interestingly, of the cars sold under the scheme 50% were Alto while about 23% were M800, he added.Khattar said one of the main reasons for the company's confidence in doing well in rural areas was its ability to rope in regional rural banks as partners for financing besides taking help from the company's existing umbrella of car financiers including Mahindra Finance and Magnum. "We wrote to 95 regional rural banks, which together have about 14,000 branches all over the country for financing purchases," he said.Besides approaching the banks, MUL has also been innovating its rural sales strategy by asking dealers to appoint rural sales executives (RSEs) to build and maintain relationship with potential customers."Since January, our dealers have started appointing RSEs in villages who belong to the place and are stationed there itself. The idea is to strengthen interaction with potential customers and convert them to buyers," he said.
