At a time when Maruti Suzuki’s market share has slipped and rivals are crowding the fast-growing SUV space, chairman R.C. Bhargava is making a contrarian pitch: focus on capacity, profitability and customer acceptance instead of “harping on market share”.

“It is more important for a company to make sure that whatever manufacturing capacity it has installed, it is able to use that capacity to full 100% and sell those cars at a reasonable profit. What happens to market share is an offshoot of what is happening to the total market. It does not affect my performance in the sense that if I am doing 100% capacity utilisation and sale of my cars and I am making reasonable profits, why do I care too much about market share?,” he said. Maruti Suzuki’s share has slid from over 50% in FY19 to about 40% in FY26, its third straight year of decline, as SUVs reshape demand and competitors bulk up in premium segments.

“Market share increase will require us to put capacity increases at a much faster rate. As it is, we are now working at two sites, putting up plants. In Kharkhoda, we are putting up a plant in a little over a year. The scale of expansion is already unprecedented,” he said.

The company is building out massive manufacturing capacity across locations, including a new plant in Gujarat. “How much can we do at one time? It's not only a question of money. It's a question of organisation, resources, supply. So many things are involved. I don't think any company in the world will be doing the kind of expansion at the rate we are expanding,” he said.

Backing that claim, Managing Director and CEO Hisashi Takeuchi, “First of all, the one million automobile factory sites is far bigger than the average. Usually one factory is between Rs 2.5 lakh to 5 lakh. So one million factories are only a few all over the world. And we are doing two of those at the same time in India. This is only happening in India, no other place in the world.”

He added the company’s growth is being driven by how much it can realistically expand capacity, which is set to increase output by about 250,000 cars over current levels. Capital expenditure for the year is estimated at around ₹14,000 crore—the highest in recent years—largely due to ongoing investments at the Kharkoda facility. Additionally, work has begun on a new site in Gujarat, further pushing up capex as the company continues to invest heavily in building out manufacturing capacity.
Bhargava added that the company is already doing more than what anybody else in the world has done. “So please don't harp on market share. You look at how much we are expanding, how much we are utilising this capacity. How well the cars are being accepted by the customers. I think those are much more important aspects for a car company than this figure of market share,” he said.

The comments come even as Maruti Suzuki’s profitability faces near-term pressure. The company reported a 6.5% year-on-year decline in Q4 FY26 net profit to ₹3,659 crore, despite a 28% jump in revenue to ₹52,462.5 crore, as rising costs and accounting impacts weighed on the bottom line.

Bhargava attributed the dip largely to input costs and mark-to-market adjustments.
“As far as the profits are concerned, there have been two factors which have prevented the increase in the profits. One is that commodity prices went up sharply this year and material cost, if you look at the breakup of the cost factors, went up by a little bit over 2% I think of sales compared to what it was last year. 2% is a huge, huge number and that has brought down the profit level,” he said.

The second factor, he adds, is that in this last quarter, the mark to market impact on the debt instruments has resulted in a sharp drop. “Mark to market is nothing permanent, it keeps changing and ultimately when the security is matured, you get your full value for it, there is no loss. But notionally mark to market results either in profits going up or profits coming down. But these are all accounting entries, they are not real entries as far as I am concerned,” he said.