Maruti Suzuki's sales from rural areas in India account to 31 per cent

Maruti Suzuki had planned to focus on the rural areas in India and their strategy has worked out quite well in their favour. The company says its 2013  figures comprise 31 per cent of sales coming from such areas.

There are about 6.5 lakh villages in India and according to Mayank Pareek, senior executive officer, Maruti Suzuki is connected to nearly about 94,000 villages in 2013. He also confirmed that the company's plan for this fiscal was to reach two lakh villages. The manufacturer considers a place with a population of less than 10,000 people as a rural place and it is such regions which the company plans to tap in the coming months.

Tapping the rural segment in different places across India has helped the manufacturer to connect with their consumers and increase their overall sales. This 'micro marketing', as termed by Pareek, involves employing sales dealer executives in small groups in rural markets and 200 such groups, 7,800 executives helped the carmaker to sell 58,000 cars in first fiscal of 2014. These included the mango growers in Ratnagiri, pottery kiln owners in Jaipur, granite polishers and turmeric growers in the South who are doing reasonably well.

Maruti Suzuki will also get associated with shop keepers, teachers, primary health care executives, etc. and not just farmers now. They will aim to target 372 such groups to further boost their rural sales which already showed a growth of 18 per cent in 2013. With such an aggressive plan of targeting the rural markets and launching new products in the Indian market, the automaker is surely making the right moves to please customers and increase their market share as well.

Source: ETAuto.com