Suzuki Upbeat About India Two-wheeler Business

Second plant delayed but will come up once the market improves

- Murali Gopalan

At one level, Koichiro Hirao has reasons to be pleased because his company has been posting reasonably good growth at a time when the auto industry is in the midst of its worst slowdown in recent times.

Yet, the Managing Director of Suzuki Motorcycle India admits that the going has been “very tough for sure” in a market where all product segments are under pressure. At the beginning of this year, the sales target for Suzuki was 8.6 lakh twowheelers for 2019-20 but it now looks as if it will end up at less than eight lakh.

“This year has seen the market going down, which is a bit unfortunate,” says Hirao. Both bikes and scooters are facing headwinds even though Suzuki has managed to buck the trend. This is, however, small consolation since the company will still fall short of its targeted figure.

Globally, for the first quarter (AprilJune), Suzuki has reported sales of 3.7 lakh two-wheelers of which India is the largest market with 1.74 lakh units. China’s tally is half this number with 87,000 units with the Philippines in third place with 52,000 units. The target for this fiscal is a little over 1.8 million units, of which Asia’s share alone is 1.5 million two-wheelers.

Biggest growth engine

It is a no-brainer that India will be the biggest growth engine even while the present state of the industry is hardly any cause for cheer. At one point, Suzuki had targeted a million two-wheelers from its Gurugram plant for FY 2020 and was keen on setting up a second facility to keep the growth story going.