This company began manufacturing in India 40 years ago, has produced 3 crore cars till now

The country's largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki India, has reached the production milestone of 3 crore units since commencing operations here in December 1983, taking 40 years and 4 months to achieve the significant feat.

Presently, Maruti produces cars at its facilities in Gurugram (Haryana), Manesar (Haryana) and Hansalpur (Gujarat). Of the total, 2.68 crore cars have been produced at the Haryana-based facilities and 32 lakh cars at the Gujarat-based unit, Suzuki Motor Gujarat, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Maruti.

Among all the production bases of Suzuki, India is the fastest to reach the production milestone of 3 crore cars.

An important model that helped the company reach this production mark was the iconic M800 at over 29 lakh units. Other top contributors include the Alto 800, Alto K10, Swift, WagonR, Dzire, Omni, Baleno, Eeco, Brezza and Ertiga.

Maruti is not only the leader in domestic operations today, it leads in exports as well. Commencing car exports in 1987, the company now has a share of almost 40% of total vehicle exports from India. It exports cars to nearly 100 countries globally.

«Today India is the world's third-largest passenger vehicle market and poised to grow stronger in coming years. To fulfil customer demand and aspirations, we plan to invest further and increase our annual production capacity to 40 lakh units by FY31,» said Hisashi Takeuchi, Managing Director and CEO, Maruti Suzuki India.

«Working towards this, we will set up two new green field manufacturing plants of 10 lakh capacity each at Kharkhoda (Haryana) and Gujarat. We will also enhance our range of models from present 18 to 28 by FY31,» he added.

Maruti currently sells 18 models through Nexa, Arena and Commercial retail channels.