AN UNTOLD STORY OF MARUTI SUZUKI 800

Arguably, Maruti Car is the most significant automobile success story in independent India. It transformed the middle class in the 1980s from an aspirational bunch into achievers. It made owning a car—a step up for most middle-class families—possible. So much so that, even after more than three decades, the company is still going strong. It is clearly first among equals for the practicality sensitive Indians.

A lot has been written about how the Maruti project started in India. Much has been attributed to the vision of the late Sanjay Gandhi. While that is true to some extent, it is a half-truth.

Bachchan Kujur was a young "Sarkari Babu" in the Department of Heavy Industry in the late seventies of the last century, when history was being made. He happened to be one of the junior officers who were quietly working in the background, taking care of the documentation and paper work, when vital decisions were being made by the higher-ups. Like a fly on the wall, he observed and absorbed the anecdotes, gossip, and controversies that he arbitrarily disclosed to me over a casual conversation recently. And the storyteller in me just couldn’t resist sharing it with a wider audience.

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BACHCHAN KUJUR’S ACCOUNT IN HIS OWN WORDS—

"In the early seventies of the last century, there lived in Delhi an impatient young man in his twenties bearing the name of Sanjay Gandhi, whose mother Indira Gandhi was the then Prime Minister of India. He was said to have done a brief stint as an apprentice at the Rolls-Royce car factory in Great Britain. He dreamed of manufacturing small cars in India.

He rented a small garage in Delhi's Jhandewalan (some say it was in Gulabi Bagh), got his venture registered under the name of Maruti Limited, and began work on assembling and fabricating the prototype of a small car, sourcing components locally. All the required approvals and licences for the proposed manufacturing facility were applied for and expeditiously granted. The location chosen for the factory was a large tract of land in Gurgaon adjacent to the old highway connecting Delhi to Jaipur. A huge cavernous factory shed was erected, and Gandhi's maiden and the only car (minus the engine) fabricated at Jhandewalan garage was shifted to Gurgaon. The project failed to make progress. And with the tragic death of Sanjay Gandhi in a plane crash on the 23rd June 1980, the project virtually collapsed.

Somehow, the government of the time again became earnest in exploring the feasibility of producing pocket friendly small cars indigenously through the public sector. As a first step towards this goal, the late Sanjay Gandhi's Maruti Ltd. was nationalised and renamed Maruti Udyog Ltd. Two eminent technocrats, namely V. Krishnamurthy and Dr. D.V. Kapur, who had earned their laurels with the successes of BHEL and NTPC, respectively, were tasked with this ambitious project. V. Krishnamurthy, then Secretary of the Department of Heavy Industry, was appointed Chairman and Managing Director of MUL, and Dr. D.V. Kapur was brought in as the new Secretary of the Department of Heavy Industry.

International automobile majors were quick to sense the potentiality of the mammoth market that awaited them. All the big players, such as Toyota, Nissan, Peugeot, Citroen, Ford, GM, Fiat, and others, expressed their interest in collaborating on the project. Hence, a team led by V. Krishnamurthy and Dr. D.V. Kapur started visiting the manufacturing facilities of the auto companies.

According to an interesting anecdote that did the rounds in the corridors of Udyog Bhavan then, when the team was in Japan to visit major auto companies there, Dr. D.V. Kapur randomly noticed a cute little car on a Japanese road. It was a eureka moment for him. He exclaimed excitedly, "This is the car we need in India!". It was a Suzuki 800.

Japan’s Suzuki Corporation, though a substantial player in the two-wheeler sector, was an unknown entity in the car sector. All the same, discussions were held with the Suzuki management team. They obviously saw immense potential in the collaboration and agreed to come on board with their full support. And that's how Japan's Suzuki Corporation was chosen.

The valiant team returned and submitted its report to the government. They got the go-ahead in no time. Maruti Udyog Ltd. and Suzuki Corporation, signed a technical and financial agreement to form a joint venture public sector enterprise to manufacture in India the car that was spotted on Japanese roads, with a rechristened name—Maruti Suzuki 800.

Implementation of the project commenced immediately and progressed furiously. The Suzuki team was happy to see that a huge and properly constructed factory shed already existed. This saved them time and money. The government, in order to keep the price of the reportedly highly fuel-efficient Maruti Suzuki car competitive and low, introduced the concept of linking the rate of customs and excise duties on imported machinery and components to the "fuel efficiency" of the vehicles being manufactured. Though there was hardly any competition for Maruti Suzuki, these concessions helped to keep the price of the car lower, making it an affordable first car for a fast growing and aspirational middle class. The first few hundred cars were imported in "Completely Knocked Down (CKD)" conditions.

One of the key factors in the success of the Maruti car project was said to be the adoption of Japanese work culture from the very start. The Chairman and Managing Director of MUL, V. Krishnamurthy, never got tired of emphasising the importance of the Japanese work culture. For example, every blue-collar worker, manager, or white-collar employee or officer was required to clean his or her place of work or table and then do a few minutes of simple physical exercise before resuming the work. Uniformity in work dress for all, irrespective of rank or position, was introduced. The Japanese way of inventory management was introduced. (Toyota's inventory management is unmatched anywhere in the world! Etc. Etc.

To commemorate the occasion of Indira Gandhi's visit to the MUL plant at Gurgaon on 14th December 1983, a tastefully designed brochure had been printed and kept ready for release. There were whispers in the corridors of power that when a copy of the brochure was shown to Indira Gandhi one day before D Day, she felt upset at the absence of any mention of Sanjay Gandhi and his small car project. An embarrassed MUL management managed to salvage the situation by drafting an appropriate tribute to Sanjay Gandhi's vision and then getting it printed in time for its release as a part of the original brochure. (Some people on the fringes of the inner circle also believed that if sycophants hadn't pointed it out, Indira Gandhi wouldn't have paid much attention to it.)

Some Members of Parliament even pulled up the government for the cars not having "Maruti" written in Hindi. To wriggle out of another controversy, MUL got hundreds of labels with "Maruti" in Hindi printed in Japan and had them brought in small batches by its officials in their cabin bags.

Anyhow, on the 14th of December 1983, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi handed over the first car assembled at MUL's Gurgaon factory to the first ever buyer of a Maruti Suzuki 800, Harpal Singh from Delhi. He never sold off this car, for which he had paid a sum of Rs. 47,500.

Maruti's car that was sold as "Zen" in India was not called Zen in Japan. In fact, the car we know as 'Alto' was Zen in Japan.

After the arrival of "Zen" in the Indian market, Maruti 800 owners in Delhi who couldn’t upgrade to Zen got immediate assistance from notorious Kashmiri Gate and Karol Bagh auto parts traders. These enterprising traders replicated the look of the Zen overnight and offered its customers the chance to transmogrify an 800 into a Zen with its grills, wheel caps, and all!

Osamu Suzuki, chairman of Suzuki Corporation, was visiting India. He had heard a lot about the infamous Kashmiri Gate auto component market in Delhi. He expressed a desire to visit the market. And so a tour was organised for him. While he was exploring the market, he entered a big auto component shop. Osamu Suzuki asked the shop owner if he had Suzuki 800 engine parts for sale. The shop owner didn’t know who he was and immediately exhibited the engine parts, which couldn't be told apart from the original ones even in the slightest. The Chairman of Suzuki Corporation was dumbfounded."

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Bachchan Kujur took voluntary retirement from government service ten years ago. His last assignment was with the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). Now he is a published author. He has plans to start work on another book.

His name immediately brings to mind the famous Bachchan, which is an interesting fact about him. The inspiration behind his name couldn't have been the legendary actor because he would've been in school himself then. In fact, it was his poet father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Bachchan Kujur’s father was a huge fan of his writing, and as an ode to the great man, he decided to name his eldest son after his pseudonym.