OEMs To Rework Product Mix As Small Car Sales Rise: R.C. Bhargava

Well, a very warm welcome to Business Today TV. I am Chetan Burani. Maruti Suzuki has come out with its set of numbers and I'm joined by the chairman Mr. R. C. Bhargava. Mr. Bhargava, thank you so much for joining us at Business Today. Appreciate you joining us. The second shows, you know, strong exposure to CSO to begin with. But yes, it does not factor in the delay in the gap due to the people you know deferring its purchase decisions. How do you infer the numbers going forward? Right now

Right, Bhargava, about 3.5 lakh bookings you have reported, about 80,000 small car bookings are there post the GST cut. How many are these firm deliveries and do you expect these small car segment to now actually start to fly over because I remember when we spoke when the GST announcement cut came and you were very bullish on the small car segment. But is it now reflecting on the ground?

Right, and Bhargava, you know we were listening to you and you mentioned that the real growth would be coming in from the 18% segment of the GST vis-a-vis the 40% and you also pointed out that about you know the market share of the 18% GST is about 60-65% and it will further increase. So you mean that the 40% GST which would actually means a lot of SUVs would still be in demand from the 18% segment that means midsize SUVs would be in demand?

Right? And of course lowering tax rates also helps your production and of course helps the government garner more tax revenue. I want to ask you, you know the times are now changing with the GST cut. Are you also flexing up to change and be more flexible when it comes to production and adjusting the lines of production? We've been working on making our production lines more flexible for some time and I think the job has more or less been completed and our production lines are much more flexible to adjust to different models because each line can make more than one model and I think that change is going to help us now because we will be able to better adjust production to meet actual market demand. Right. And also Bhargava, is it applicable for all the auto sector now because now we see a complete change in tax structure for automobiles. So give us an outlook, is all the automobile sector will now be ready to change and adjust according to changing timelines? I mean what are you anticipating sir?

Right, and also Bhargava, you know we saw exports numbers coming up very finely and you had set a different target for exports. What are we targeting and how much time are you pushing for exports now sir?