Maruti Suzuki India has surprisingly raised the bar with 1,08,000 units of the new Swift already being booked. Moreover, the figure achieved by the popular product of Maruti, is the highest for any car in India so far.
The fact has emerged as a blessing in disguise for the company, which has been struggling to produce its vehicles according to the capacity of its plant, for the last few weeks. Not to forget, the overall slowdown that has engulfed the passenger car market that refuses to fade out at the outset.
Maruti has managed to take control over things by producing a little over 700 cars a day, as a combined capacity of its two plants. However, the commendable effort by the company does not seem to influence the long waiting periods, as customers still need to wait for about five months for the petrol version. Moreover, the diesel version has asked for a time of more than six months.
However, company officials claim that the 'Swift customers' are loyal and would be willing to adjust with the delay in deliveries. Vide with the waiting period extended to six months, the possibility of switchovers cannot be ruled out.
Since the workers disrupted the production process, Maruti has left no stone unturned in order to maintain decent pace of production at Manesar. In the wake of the unrest, it even hired 850 new ITI-trained people as contract workers, shifting a part of its production of the Swift to Gurgaon. In addition, the company also commenced an automated weld and paint shop at Manesar to compensate for the loss.
The desperate attempts made to fight the menace does not stop here, with the idea of making a shorter version of the Swift Dzire at Manesar being taken consideration, to boost the overall demand.
According to a Maruti official, discounts have already been raised significantly, as against the first quarter of this fiscal. In fact, the average discounts on all of Maruti’s products now count same as during 2008-09. In the June quarter, average discounts offered were Rs. 9,000 to Rs. 9,500, as against Rs. 8,000 to Rs. 8,500 in the previous year quarter. The current quarter carries discounts of Rs. 11,000 to Rs. 11,500.
In fact, dealers in Delhi are offering Rs. 20,000 cash discount for the Alto, the country’s highest selling car. Discounts for other models too are also at the peak level since 2008-09.
Maruti officials conceded that the country’s largest car maker has registered a loss of about Rs. 1,000 crore in turnover, due to the chaotic conditions at the plant, and that its profitability would be at an all-time low. As speculated by the company, the sales figure too, may bore the brunt once again by declining to around 5 per cent this quarter.
Thus, the silver lining in the form of new Swift has relieved the Maruti camp to some extent, which has been continuously threatened by unbidden issues in the recent past.
