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The strategic tie-up between Suzuki and Toyota to share manufacturing capacity and models seems to have hit a bump over how to account for the sales numbers.
Come June, Maruti Suzuki will manufacture its top-selling model Baleno for Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM). The car will be cross-badged and sold as Glanza by the latter.
While both the players are in agreement with each other up to this point, Maruti is insisting that it will show the Glanza units that it delivers to TKM as part of its wholesale numbers, shared monthly with the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). TKM has not agreed to this.
Speaking to BusinessLine , RC Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki, said: “We will show the cars sold to Toyota as a wholesale number and will report that accordingly in our monthly sales.” He said that till the time reporting of numbers to SIAM is in wholesale numbers, we will report the number of cars supplied to TKM as Maruti’s wholesale number.”
On the other hand, TKM’s N Raja, Deputy Managing Director, said: “Maruti cannot count the Glanza sales as wholesale numbers because we will do that ... it will be billed to dealers and then to the customers. We will report them as wholesale numbers every month.”
Despatches of Glanza will start from Suzuki’s Gujarat factory next month, said Raja. However, confusion remains over who will report the number. If both the companies share the same as wholesale numbers, it will lead to a duplication of the count.
Industry body SIAM, which releases monthly data, said it would make sure that the numbers are not duplicated.
SIAM assertion
“We (SIAM) will make sure double counting does not happen between Maruti Suzuki India and TKM when they sell their cross-badged cars,” Sugato Sen, Deputy Director General, SIAM, told BusinessLine .
“Toyota cannot report the wholesale number of a car that Maruti Suzuki has sold to them and reported as the wholesale number”, or vice versa, he asserted.
There has been a precedent to this situation. When the vehicle factory in Jabalpur used to make Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland trucks for the army, the numbers were counted as trucks sold by Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland and not as trucks sold by the Jabalpur factory, Sen added.
So similarly, what could happen is Maruti can report the wholesale number of Baleno as it is, and Toyota of Glanza also as wholesale because both the cars are made at Suzuki Gujarat, which owned by Suzuki, Japan.
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