When62, managing director of Maruti Suzuki , picked up the reins at India’s largest selling automaker in April 2013, the challenge was daunting. With Maruti sitting pretty with a 42% market share, analysts reckoned that Ayukawa’s tenure would be a success if he staved off any erosion in the leader’s fat slice of the pie. Ayukawa did better. Maruti’s share has moved up to over 50% (April-June 2017 quarter). In an interview with Malini Goyal, Ayukawa, in his fifth year, reflects on his India stint and the path ahead for Maruti Suzuki. Edited excerpts:Nakanishi (his predecessor) is like my big brother. Any succession is not easy. I came with some experience — I was in Pakistan for four years, where we had a manufacturing company. That helped. I knew how to manage a manufacturing company. And got some idea about the region. Fortunately, during my tenure here, business has expanded. India market is growing. We are developing new products.My children are working in Japan and my wife is here with me. The biggest difference between India and Pakistan is that India is lot more developed. My wife was initially surprised and said it (Gurgaon) was a very big city with so many highrises. In Japan, where we lived, it was not a big city. Living here involves some inconvenience like power cuts and poor service quality in some areas. But human relationships here are very nice. I have lot of Indian friends. India has lot of tourist places and during vacations, I constantly try and go to new places. Last year I went to Ajanta & Ellora and Darjeeling. I have enjoyed working here.When I came in 2013, the violence at Maruti’s IMT Manesar plant was fresh in everyone’s memory. It was a very serious issue. I tried to communicate with workers and integrate our people. I communicated directly with workers every month, sharing information and making them understand the current situation.I still do it. I believe this (collaboration and communication with workers) is important for smooth running of the company.Since I came here, we were developing products for India in Japan. Those products were launched in India (like Baleno and Vitara Brezza) after I came here. Fortunately, those products are doing well. We are now focusing on product development in India.Our core issue was to get the right product and bring to market models that Indian customers wanted. We have very much focused on that.Last year, we launched Vitara Brezza, which was received well (it enjoys over four-month waiting period).Of course, the platform was developed in Japan but the top part (the body) was developed by the R&D team in India. Now we have to take the next step. Our next car should be developed in India by Indian engineers. By next year, the first phase of our Rohtak R&D center will be almost complete and we should be able to develop a complete product here and also test it.We always analyse good products from our competitor. Look at areas they are ahead of us and transfer those learnings. For example, Renault Kwid is a very challenging product, is popular and very well accepted.Hyundai Creta, i20 and Ford EcoSport are also other such successful products.But in business it is not just product and sales that are important. Good after-sales service must be available and is also very important. Fortunately, we have been in the market for more than 25 years and we have a larger sales and after-sales network than the competition. Our competitors face difficulties.While they are present in big cities they do not have a presence in rural areas. We have the benefit of a big and expanding network. Our focus is always to focus on customer demand and their needs. We always try to offer good products that are better than our competitors. On ride-sharing apps.We have to carefully watch and understand the mind of our customers. We are doing (customer) segmentation and supplying cars to cab aggregators.We have to see how we realise the idea of EVs. Globally, there are not too many electric vehicles. Of course we have tried to develop one. The most important thing to keep in mind is that it there is both a cost and convenience element to it. And the customer must accept it. We (Suzuki Motors) have the technology. The question is how we are going to use it. For us, our customer is at the center and we will do what they want. I may be ready. But if India is not ready, then what’s the point?Since last year, we have been collaborating with Toyota in the area of technology, environment, IT and safety. It could extend to product-sharing in future.We could provide them with some product. We also have a chance to supply small car technology. Details are not there (right now), but in future we can have some agreement. Any business partnership is very sensitive. Unfortunately, our experience with Volkswagen was not that good. Thankfully, Suzuki and Toyota are collaborating well.On the whole, the GST system is welcome. We had a very complicated tax system state-wise. It is a great thing if GST can integrate nationwide. Transportation, I hear, has become easy and speedy. At this moment, I cannot see many negative issues. On the taxation, except hybrid cars overall taxes are going down. Mild hybrid is contributing to the environment but the tax has gone up. We have to communicate this with our customers. The price gap between small cars and other segments has come down (due to the new tax structure) but the gap still remains. Our point is to go beyond the price and have a better customer connect with our brand, technology, product and better experience in our showrooms and after-sales service. We feel price is one of the factors. But for customer, product, design, features are as important.Customer demand is changing every day. They get lot of information from outside and have become demanding with high expectations.They want new technology and features like automatic transmission and hybrid. Two years back, we started our premium Nexa outlets.Initially our dealers were hesitant. Fortunately, it has been successful and we have 250-plus network now. Now we are setting up Nexa service workshops.We will try to spread the network nationwide and have 350 workshops in a few years. We will also focus on second-hand cars with our True Value brand and bring lot of transparency for buyers.Maruti has a big potential market outside of Africa and the Middle East. We do send our products to Europe. Our status (inside Suzuki) has become bigger. About 10% of our production is exported but we are not happy. At 1.8 million capacity, there is still shortage of production. We started production in the Gujarat plant in Februrary and are producing 10,000 vehicles (Balenos) a month in one shift. We are carefully ramping up our capacity and in six months we will start with two shifts operations.Our market share today is 50%-plus. If we provide good product I believe we can keep that market share and even expand it. But even our competitiors are getting better. Our midterm target in the company is to try and achieve 2 million (unit sales) by 2020. We are preparing for it. India will be the world’s third largest car market by then. India has (already) outpaced the HQ. It is my pleasure to be here.