In next 10 days, Maruti will be launching two more SUVs: Shashank Srivastava

“The wholesale number for December has been a little muted. The total for the industry was 2,76,000 against 2,55,000 last year. That is a growth of about 8% but in terms of retail, the total sales for the industry have been in excess of 4,11,000 against 3,20,000 last year, a growth of 28%. So, there is a tale of two cities – high retail but lower wholesale,” says Shashank Srivastava, ED, Maruti Suzuki India

The December sales numbers for Maruti Suzuki was a tad below the expected line. How much of the auto sales was impacted due to the semiconductor shortage?
Just a couple of points; we have to look at the December sales figure a little bit differently from the normal months because in December, the end manufacturers as well as the dealers would like to keep the stock levels at a minimum because of the change of the year and registration year.

That is why the wholesale number for December has been a little muted. The total for the industry was 2,76,000 against 2,55,000 last year. That is a growth of about 8% but in terms of retail, which is really important for measuring what has been the actual market situation for the industry it has been in excess of 4,11,000 against 3,20,000 last year, that is a growth of 28%. So, there is the tales of two cities – high retail but lower wholesale.

I would guess that the total impact of the semiconductor shortage on production would have been 5-10% level because while the industry has achieved a level of about 94-95% of the overall production levels since this problem of semiconductor came in August of 2021, we still have a problem seen in many of the models and that 5% balance is not coming down.

That is where the challenge is going to be. There will be many models in the industry with a long waiting list and manufacturers are not able to produce enough because of the semiconductor crisis.

You did touch upon your retail sales numbers but could you talk a bit more about this specific problem in December, especially as the company was giving a lot of discounts? In terms of December sales, were entry level cars seeing better sales coming in vis-a-vis November?
Yes, they were good and also the top selling five models are all small cars in the industry – not only for December but for this year as well, Wagon R for example, is the number one car in the industry for this calendar year as well as financial year as well as for the quarter.

So the discounts that you are referring to is actually a function of availability and actual demand. The demand for small cars is not small. It is quite large but the availability situation is a lot better. Having said that, if you compare it with three years back, the small care volumes have dipped and their contribution to the overall industry has also come down from about 45% to roughly around 36%.

Let us talk about the sales outlook for the month of January and beyond. Will we see the numbers surpass the 1.5 lakh unit mark anytime soon?
It is difficult to give a prediction for January at the moment. This is the first day of our operations after the block shutdown. We have a maintenance shutdown and were closed for about eight days and we are just making that assessment. We also have to take into account the effect on demand on the overall price increases that we will be affecting in January. One will have to wait a few more days for the actual numbers for January.

How many SUV launches have you planned in 2023?
Actually, you made a very good point, Maruti’s market share in the non-SUV segment has gone above 65%. It has increased over last year. So, in the non-SUV segment, we seem to be doing quite well. However, the SUV segment is where we have weakness because when you combine the SUV market share with the non-SUV market share, the overall market share falls to below 45% and in our objective to get to 50% market share, we have to introduce more SUV and strengthen our portfolio for SUV.

We just have two models out of about 46 in the industry in SUV space and so we have prepared for it. Recently we launched the Grand Vitara. We also launched the new Brezza and in the next 10 days, at the auto expo, we will be launching two more SUVs to strengthen our portfolio. That should give us a good increase in the volume in the SUV segment and hence we can move towards our overall objective of trying to get to that 50% market share.

What exactly will define the year for Maruti Suzuki in 2023? In 2022, there were more SUV and hybrid launches but what should we all look forward to in 2023 from Maruti stable?
We launched nine upgraded or new products in 2022. We will be launching two more SUVs in the next 10 days. One clear objective is that we were trying to increase the production in line with the demand pattern.

So while production has increased, it has not really increased along in line with the demand patterns that we have observed. As a result, some of the models like the Ertiga, XL6, Grand Vitara, Brezza, Dzire and Swift, are seeing long waiting periods, which we will try to reduce by hopefully increasing production in line with the demand pattern.

Second, we will try to push our volumes in the SUV segment so that we can increase our market share there and hence the medium term objective of getting to 50% market share. These two will define the year and, of course, we will have to keep monitoring the situation as regards any adverse impact we may have on demand overall because of either inflation or economic growth getting reduced or liquidity issues, etc. We will be monitoring those red flags very closely.