Maruti Suzuki eyes rural, small town drive for Alto sales

This fiscal, Maruti plans to touch 25 per cent growth in the rural market, Ram Suresh Akella, General Manager, Commercial Business Head (South) told reporters here.

Small towns and niche segments like turmeric farmers in Tiruchengode in Tamil Nadu, spices farmers in Kerala and apple growers in Himachal Pradesh are being targetted to achieve this growth, he said.

"We are concurrently taking steps to enhance our presence in smaller towns by opening new exetension outlets," he said.

There are over 500 extension outlets out of a total 11,000 sale points.

Alto has been the company's bestseller and top model in the world in terms of single design. This year Swift overtook it to some extent, he said.

When pointed out that demand for luxury cars is rising, he said 25,000 Alto cars were sold in a month last year.

"There is good demand for it even now. It is the best entry level car and is fuel efficient. There is definite demand for it."

He said there is a definite increase in demand for diesel model. In the last three years, demand for diesel cars in the Indian market was 36 per cent, which went up to 47 per cent in 2011-12, touching 58 per cent this year.

Maruti sold 1.2 million units (all inclusive) in 2010-11. In diesel, Maruti's capacity is 400,000 cars per annum.

Maruti is adding capacity to diesel. Last fiscal, it

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