While placing India as the export hub, Suzuki Motor Corp’s management is quite confident of the quality of vehicles manufactured and exported by Maruti Suzuki, and believes that it would have a competitive edge in the global markets.
“China is not the only competitor. We compete with vehicles made in the US, Europe and Japan. Maruti Suzuki is based upon Japanese manufacturing with the quality standards of Suzuki, which is accepted globally,” Suzuki Motor President Toshihiro Suzuki told reporters today. “So Maruti Suzuki will be able to win over the competition in vehicles exported from India to other parts of the world.”
Toshihiro Suzuki’s comments come as the Japanese auto giant has plans to almost triple its exports from India to 750,000 cars by the end of the decade. Suzuki’s first electric car – e Vitara – will be manufactured in India. The model will be first exported to Europe and Japan, before aggressively selling it in the Indian market.
“India will be a global production hub for Suzuki electric vehicles,” Toshihiro Suzuki said. “First, we will export this vehicle [e Vitara] to Europe, then Japan; we would like to leverage India's scale and export to the world.”
Maruti Suzuki started exporting vehicles to Japan with Baleno in 2016, followed by Fronx last year. “We are exporting to over 70 countries. In Japan, we have more than 15,000 backlog for Fronx,” he said.
“This shows the quality of vehicles manufactured in India is being accepted by the global markets. Both Maruti Suzuki and Suzuki are going to further level up this.”
Apart from Maruti Suzuki, another Japanese automaker Honda Motor Corp is also using India as an export hub. Honda started exports from India to Japan with its Elevate SUV last year.
While Honda Cars India’s domestic sales faced market share challenges in the last financial year, its exports grew by an impressive 60%, thereby boosting the bottom line.