Maruti Suzuki Planning to Develop Cars Independently

It appears that being tied up with the other regional brands has become a burden for most people. For Maruti, it looks like they are planning to go solo as they are on the prowl for expat and Indian engineers associated with the troubled US, Europe and Japan carmakers to form the core of their own cars from scratch in India.

Until now Maruti’s technical expertise had been restricted to giving facelift to older Suzuki cars like the Zen and Omni and upgrading them to meet the new emission norms. Although the Indian R&D team was involved in the development of Swift, Dzire and SX4, their major work was conceived in Japan. The local R&D centre, which will spearhead design and development of small cars in India, will change all that. The unit will also have testing facilities to carry out research on safety and newer technologies and will sport a testing track.

The company plans to up headcount of engineers 30% to 1,000 by 2010 to churn out new cars. Maruti, which has traditionally hired freshers from engineering colleges in India, will be tapping several top engineers and designers with experience to broaden talent pool. Maruti Suzuki India managing director S Nakanishi said: “India is Suzuki’s largest operating business, contributing more in sales and profitability than even Japan. Suzuki wants it to evolve as a full-fledged car company with capability to develop cars from scratch in future.” Suzuki has already announced $2 billion investment by 2010 in India for capacity expansion and new product development.

(Source) Economic Times

Tags: capacity expansion, car company, d centre, development source, engineering colleges, facelift, freshers, headcount, indian engineers, maruti, nakanishi, new cars, newer technologies, regional brands, small cars, suzuki cars, talent pool