Maruti to add over 320 outlets this year

The company is expected to have 250 Nexa showrooms by end of 2016-17, says a senior official

Automobile major Maruti Suzuki India is planning to add around 323 more dealership outlets including 123 Nexa showrooms, which is catering to premium segment of the passenger car market. The company is expected to continue its low double digit growth during the current financial year, said R S Kalsi, executive director (Marketing and Sales), Maruti Suzuki India.

"We have sold around 70,000 cars in the Nexa channel in six months and it has been able to create that delight among the customers," he added. Moving forward we will expand this to 250 outlets. We closed the year at 127 and we will go to 250 by March, 2017.

He said that the company has so far set up 127 Nexa showrooms in the country and is planning to have 250 showrooms in the segment by March, 2017. The company, which has been catering to the mass market for long, has come up with the brand to address the growing market of new generation, who wanted to have a premium category products.

The total outlets of the company is around 1,800 across the country at present. It will be adding another 200 to this.

"We closed the year with 1,947 outlets including Nexa and there could be addition of 323 outlets during the year," he said. The company has over 1,000 used car outlets under the pre-owned car brand True Value.

The company has relationship managers to deal with the after-sales service of the cars sold through Nexa, though they are serviced in the existing centres. The company has Maruti Mobile service, in which the company's vehicle will go to the customer for the service of the car; home pick up, in which the service personnel will pick up the car from the place where customer wants it to be picked up or the customer or his representative could leave the car at the service centre, where the relationship manager would take care of the services.

The company has earned a market share of 1.8 per cent in the passenger vehicle market in the year 2015-16, even as there are a large number of players. The company has posted a market share of 46.8 per cent in the passenger vehicle segment during the year.

"In last seven years, this is our highest market share. This has not happened overnight. We have been planning to achieve this through our network, our products, service network etc. Today we have more than 3,100 workshops across the country," he said.

He added that while the market has been growing at single digits, the company was able to grow at double digits and is expecting to continue the growth in double digits this year also. With the market growth yet to pick up in the country, the company has worked towards identifying the situation in the rural and urban markets and address it according to the requirement to improve its business. For instance, by studying the rural market and the categories of customers there, the company was able to grow 10 per cent more during 2015-16, compared to the 22 per cent growth in 2014-15, he added.

The company will take call on revising its price to adjust the impact of fluctuation in valuation of Yen during its quarterly review, if the fluctuation is very high.