Maruti to invest Rs9,000 crore on R&D, regional distribution centres: report

24 March 2008

Mumbai: Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country's largest car maker, will invest over Rs9,000 crore to set up a world class R&D design facility and regional distribution centers, reports quoting a top official of the company said.

"We will invest Rs9,000 crore in India, which will be over and above the earlier investment programme announced by the chairman last year," reports quoted Maruti CEO Shinzo Nakanishi as saying.

Japanese company Suzuki, which owns majority 54.2 per cent of Maruti Suzuki India, had in December revealed plans to invest Rs9,000 crore to raise capacity of its Indian operations to 960,000 units a year.

Under the fresh investment, planned over eight years, the company would set up five large warehouses across the country to cut delivery time, the report said.

The regional centres would make available all Maruti models to distributors at the regional level, thereby doing away with the problem of sourcing the car model directly from the company's office at Gurgaon or Manesar and cutting delivery time by 70-75 per cent, the company said.

Maruti plans to have four or five regional centres in the next couple of years - in eastern, western, southern and central India.