Maruti is strengthening its research and development team in India. The R&D center is one of the biggest for Suzuki outside India and the team is now gearing up to manufacture its own car from scratch. Till date the Indian R&D team had been involved in giving facelifts to older Suzuki cars like Omni or Zen. It has not built its own car till now, even though it had been actively involved in development of extremely successful models like Swift, Dzire and SX4. However, the fact remains that even for these popular cars, the initial concept was conceived and developed in Japan only.

The Indian center is now set to change this as it gets involved in development of small cars which is its specialty. The center shall also have a testing track along with research facilities to test the newer technologies and safety features. “We are doing a global search for engineers and technocrats to develop new team leaders to equip the company to gain competence in making structural changes in our existing cars as well as developing new concept models for Maruti,” executive officer-R&D IV Rao said.

The Indian R&D center is increasing its team strength and intends to have nearly 1000 engineers by 2010. “India is Suzuki’s largest operating business, contributing more in sales and profitability than even Japan. Suzuki wants it to evolve as a full-fledged car company with capability to develop cars from scratch in future,” said Maruti Suzuki India managing director, S Nakanishi. Suzuki has already announced $2 billion investment by 2010 in India for capacity expansion and new product development.