The country’s largest passenger vehicles (PVs) maker, Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL), has said that it is not worried about market share anymore because whatever it is producing is being sold in the market, and there is still a wide gap between sales with the competitors.

The company’s market share has fallen from 50 per cent around five years ago to around 41 per cent now in the total PV domestic market. Its peak market share was recorded at 51.21 per cent in FY19, which has come down to 41.7 per cent in the current financial year.

“If I can sell three or four million cars where somebody else is selling one million cars, if my market share falls, so what, how does it matter? If I am keeping a large part or some part of my capacity unutilised, I am not able to sell cars and my capacity cannot be used, then market share becomes relevant. But, if I am using my capacity and increasing the volume every year, to that extent, market share has limitations,” R C Bhargava, Chairman, MSIL, told businessline.

He said the company is adding production of around two lakh cars every year, and no other company could ever do such a rapid expansion. “We have no experience of such a rapid expansion because now from two million, we have to go to four million (production capacity), and all in a period of eight years. That comes to around 2.5 lakh units every year,” he remarked.

Bhargava said even if the overall cars market growth in India is faster and by 2030, it reaches eight million, it would be difficult for Maruti to get a 50 per cent market share.

“I can’t expand at any rate because my capacity to expand is limited, be it anybody. The market share depends on how the overall pie grows. I can only make sure that what I can manufacture, I can sell,” he said.

In the calendar year 2023, MSIL dispatched (sales to dealers) 17,07,668 units of total PVs and the industry dispatched 41,01,600 units. In the April-December period, the company recorded dispatches of 12,80,090 units, a year-on-year growth of 8.54 per cent as compared with 1,179,292 units in April-December 2022-23.

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