Inside the Suzuki success story

Suzuki insider Shinzo Nakanishi gets Indian and Japanese leaders to share power at Maruti. It is a tough blend to concoct
About 25 years ago, India was a different country, Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL) was then called Maruti Udyog and Shinzo Nakanishi was a younger man. “It was easy to do business here but difficult to live,” MSIL’s first Japanese managing director recalls. Indians raved about Maruti cars and bought whatever it sold, but life was tough for a Japanese man. India then had few lifestyle comforts to offer. “It was difficult to even call home. When I got through I had to shout as the line was bad.” He also missed Japanese food.
Today, “Business is tough. Life is easier,” says Nakanishi, 61. Competition is stiff and selling cars is no longer easy. Infrastructure has improved. Sprawling malls make shopping easier. The telecom network is world class. And yes, he gets “better, cheaper wasabi here than in Japan — served in [a] five-star environment.”
Nakanishi is learning to settle down with the new realities. So is Suzuki Motors, the parent of India’s largest car maker, MSIL. What began as a random business play in a Third-World country in the 1980s has now unexpectedly become the star, contributing 13 per cent of the revenue and over 40 per cent of the net profit. India happens to be the only market in the world where Suzuki has over 50 per cent market share. “After the [Goldman Sachs] BRIC report [which highlighted the importance of emerging markets like India], people in Japan say Suzuki had the eyes to see, [it had] future vision,” says Nakanishi.
“Nobody thought like that. We just got lucky,” he candidly admits.
Suzuki is now leaving nothing to chance. In the last one-and-half years, it has rejigged the top deck at Maruti, appointing Suzuki stalwart Nakanishi as the MD. It is pumping in more than Rs. 9,000 crore in three years to target one million car sales, and export 200,000 while substantially scaling up the R&D in India. “Suzuki is preparing Maruti for a bigger, much bigger, global role,” says chairman R.C. Bhargava.
Hindi, Japani Bhai-Bhai
This marks a transition from an insecure, anxious parenthood with worries over maintaining control on its faraway subsidiary to a far more confident relationship. Even till 2007, two Japanese joint MDs and a Japanese chairman flanked the Indian MD, Jagdish Khattar, to keep a tight control over Maruti. Then Suzuki finally decided to let go. It anointed a Japanese MD, abolished the post of joint MDs and appointed an Indian chairman. All this was beefed up by a move to broaden the Indian leadership team by forming a slightly complex hybrid management structure: A new mini board was formed of nine top executives — with an Indian-Japanese pair steering each of the four key departments (the fifth, administration, is managed only by an Indian).