Taking forward its successful portfolio of small cars in Rural India, Maruti Suzuki is planning to double its outlets in two years down the line from 231 to more than 450 outlets. This will take the overall figure of outlets in the country to almost 1,000 from the current 680 odd dealerships.

Maruti has rightly sensed the opportunities lying ahead in the rural market. The distribution network in Rural India will account for approximately 50 percent of the Maruti Suzuki’s network. This step of increasing outlets is taken by keeping in mind a million vehicles sales to be achieved from domestic market. At present, company is eyeing its mid term plan of generating sales of 0.23 million cars in a year from Rural India.

According to Chief General Manager, volumes from these rural outlets are not important. The main strategy is to have presence in most of the regions and over a period of time numbers will follow eventually.

Maruti wants major chunk of his business to come from this untapped segment. They have set an ambitious sales target of 0.1 million cars in the present year.

We can easily understand the intensity of Maruti’s efforts in Rural India by the fact that they have exclusive rural marketing department which has given employment to more than 15,000 people and more than 2500 rural development sales executives are channelizing the marketing efforts.

Things are not easy as it looks. In order to make things easier, Maruti are planning to come up with special schemes and initiatives which include tie-up with panchayat members, sponsoring kabaddi tournaments and sales fairs.

Looking at the way, Maruti is marching ahead in Rural streets with aggressive marketing plans, I don’t think other players in the industry will remain quiet for a longer period.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 11:55 am and is filed under Rural Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.