Maruti-Suzuki’s Trajectory: From a National Champion to a Japanese-owned Subsidiary

Maruti-Suzuki is the market leader in India’s passenger car market and has remained in this position despite losing ground to the growing competition. Understanding Maruti-Suzuki’s trajectory is interesting not only because it is one of the most successful players in one of the fastest growing emerging markets, but also because the case epitomises the transformation the Indian economy and society has undergone in the past decades. While MarutiSuzuki’s trajectory is strongly shaped by the deregulation and liberalisation of the Indian socio-economic context, this influence is not unidirectional. Being a national champion in the first decades of its existence, Maruti-Suzuki has become a driver of liberalisation and reform as a range of government polices are tailored to the company’s needs. Clearly, like no other automobile company, Maruti-Suzuki has changed and shaped the development of the Indian automobile industry. Drawing broadly on Boyer and Freyssenet’s (2003) work and definition of production models and their contextual embeddedness, this chapter focuses on the transformation of Maruti-Suzuki’s production model between 1992 and 2007. This discussion highlights the close conjunction between changes in the company’s production model and its context. The chapter is structured as follows. In the next section we briefly discuss Maruti-Suzuki’s trajectory until the early 1990s. The following sections discuss Maruti-Suzuki’s trajectory from the early to mid-1990s until 2001, and the period from 2002 until 2007.