India’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL) is targeting to increase its sales from 12 lakh to 20 lakh vehicles a year in the next five to six years.

If the company achieves this target, MSIL would become the first firm from the Suzuki stable to do so globally, said RS Kalsi, Executive Director (Marketing and Sales), here on Thursday.

Tracing the Maruti history briefly, he said in December 1993, when the company commenced production, it manufactured only 10 cars a day, now it makes 4,500 daily.

Exuding optimism after a sectoral contraction last year, Kalsi said MSIL is expected to grow over 10 per cent this year against the industry’s growth of less than 3 per cent.

Clocking a 44 per cent market share in India, it has already sold 7.5 lakh cars in the first half of 2014-15, out of the total industry sales of 9.42 lakh passenger vehicles.

Last year, the industry had sold 9.73 lakh cars.

In fact, Maruti gained 4 per cent share in the automobile market in India last year, from its 17 competitors.

Even the customer profile has changed: the average age of Maruti customer has decreased from 41 years last fiscal to 33 years now.

“After a flat market for three years, the customers’ pent-up demand is showing this year.”

Kalsi said Maruti has a 30 per cent penetration of India’s rural markets.

Asked about the impact of increase in diesel and decrease in petrol prices on sales pattern, he said Maruti’s petrol car sales have increased from 30 per cent of the overall sales to 35 per cent.

“Earlier, the ratio of diesel to petrol car sales was 60:40, which is expected to stabilise to 50:50 due to reducing price gap between the two fuels.”

Asked about the Gujarat plant, Kalsi said it is expected to start production by 2017 when the installed capacity of 15 lakh cars a year at MSIL’s existing plants in Gurgaon and Manesar is fully utilised and additional demand crops up.

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