New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) has earmarked Rs1,000 crore in the current fiscal to buy land parcels for new dealerships.
As part of its network expansion strategy, the company plans to buy land parcels, build dealerships and then lease them to selected dealers. Maruti Suzuki has already finalized 120 such land deals across the country in the first half of the current financial year.
“We have earmarked a budget of Rs1,000 crore for the current fiscal. We plan to have around 1,500 new dealerships over the next three years,” Maruti Suzuki’s chief financial officer (CFO) Ajay Seth said. The trigger for the land purchase is increasing prices across the country, especially in high-potential belts, which impacted profitability of dealerships, he said.
Maruti Suzuki, at present, has the biggest sales network across the country which includes 2,069 dealerships in 1,700 cities. It also sells its premium models from 280 premium retail chain Nexa. It also runs a network of around 3,293 service centres across the country.
The carmaker’s bid to enhance sales network comes at time when it has set a target to sell two million units per annum by 2020. The company sold over 1.5 million units during the last fiscal.
Maruti Suzuki is flush with funds. At the end of first half of the current fiscal, it had a cash reserve of around Rs31,000 crore.