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R.Y. Narayanan

Coimbatore , Nov. 16

ABT Ltd, belonging to the Sakthi Sugars group, is planning to pump in about Rs 12 crore in the next three years to enlarge its service network for Maruti vehicles in the State.

The company, which is one of the largest sellers of Maruti vehicles in Tamil Nadu, plans to have one service station in every district headquarters in view of growing number of vehicles of the Maruti clan it is servicing, according to Mr M. Manickam, Director, ABT Ltd and Managing Director of Sakthi Sugars Ltd.

Speaking to Business Line here, he said ABT Ltd was one of the single largest dealers for Maruti vehicles having outlets in Coimbatore, Chennai, Tiruchi and Madurai. The company was running fifteen service stations located closer to its four dealership outlets, to service the vehicles sold by the company. At present, ABT Ltd serviced about 10,000 vehicles a month. The company was now planning to double the number of service stations to thirty by 2006. Each service station may require an investment of about Rs 80 lakh, taking the total investment to about Rs 12 crore. It is also being planned to make them web-enabled so that the customers could log-in to have details of the service done etc.

Once the expansion works were completed, he expected the number of vehicles serviced every month to go up to 20,000. Mr Manickam said ABT Ltd ranked at the top for servicing the highest number of Maruti vehicles in the entire country and customer loyalty in the South was one of the crucial factors for achieving this distinction. In the sale of Maruti spare parts too, his outfit ranked among the top dealers nationally.

Mr N. Shanmugasundaram, Chief Executive, ABT Ltd, said Maruti has introduced a lot of quality standards for its dealers in the past few years which has resulted in quicker and cost effective execution of vehicle repair works, better diagnosis of the faults etc. The Maruti engineers supervised these works and obtained customer feed back on service quality themselves. Mr Manickam said the idea was to have one Maruti service station in every district in the State so that `ABT Maruti' (the brand name of its Maruti dealership) customers could be confident that help would be nearby in case of any vehicle breakdown.

With travelling by road becoming cost efficient, more people are taking to road travel and a well-networked service facility further instilled confidence among the ABT Maruti customers, he added.

It was on the basis of customer requirement that the locations were chosen and when there was a critical mass of customers in a particular area, the company reached out to them by opening service stations , he said.

Mr Shanmugasundaram, answering a question, said the company recently opened its service station in Tirupur, which has the potential to have a dealership outlet. He felt that there were similar locations for opening Maruti dealership outlets in the State and his company was willing look at these opportunities. But it was for Maruti management to take decisions in this regard.

At present, ABT Maruti sold about 600-700 Maruti vehicles a month in Tamil Nadu, accounting for about 35 per cent of the Maruti market in the State, he added.

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