Maruti Suzuki all set to cross a million units in production and sales for 2009-10

Whats common between Toyota, GM, Volkswagen, Ford,  Renault and Maruti Suzuki? Nothing you would say apart from the fact that they all make cars!

But you would not be entirely true though! India’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki is all set to enter the big league with the production and sales figure crossing the million mark for the year 2009-2010. With this fear the company will join the rarefied group of manufacturers which can boast of a seven figure volumes in a single year. Maruti Suzuki’s production for the period April 09 to February 10 has already touched 9.31 lakh units with the sales following closely at 9.23 lakh units.

According to company’s Chairman, RC Bhargava – ” The company is confident of crossing the million mark in the second half of this month”.

Suzuki’s Chairman, Osamu Suzuki will also be flying to India for a special ceremony to be held in India later this month.

“Suzuki wanted to be a part of the celebration and would be joining us in a formal ceremony on March 23,” Bhargava said.

Starting its operations 26 years back the company is one of the oldest car manufacturers in India and is regularly credited for putting ‘India on wheels’ with the diminutive Maruti 800 which gave Indians first taste of Japanese technology and reliability. The car continues to be sold to this date making it one of the longest selling car models in the world. The new Bharat IV emission norms however will cease the sale of the car in the metro cities from April 2010.

The company has been a part of the automobile evolution in India when the annual market size was a paltry 40,000 units which has now grown to a massive 2 million units a year.

Maruti Suzuki is currently the most dominant force in the Indian automobile indutry commanding more than 50% of the total market share but is seeing intense competition from all quarters. Global biggies like VW, Ford, FIat and GM have already launched their small cars in India while Toyota will launch their’s by the end of this year.