There is no question of job cuts at Maruti Suzuki, says RC Bhargava, Chairman

Ravindra Chandra Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki, talks about the production of ventilators in collaboration with AgVa Healthcare, the help of its vendors including Motherson Sumi and production plans at Manesar plant among others during an exclusive interview with Swati Khandelwal, Zee Business. Edited Excerpts:  

Q: Maruti Suzuki has delivered the first batch of 500 ventilators to HLL Lifecare. How you are helping Agva Healthcare, a start-up to scale-up ventilator production? 

A: The government told us that there is a great need for ventilators and asked us to help them. Then, we thought that what can give the fastest result and it can happen only if someone is an existing ventilator producer, has its technology and its products are approved by the government but don’t have the capacity of producing in large volume. And, we found AgVa Healthcare, a company based in Noida. It is a new company that started working in 2018 but was not able to produce in bulk. So, we on March 30, asked them to run the company and pay attention towards its technology and the rest work like production work, vendor development, finance arrangement, availability of components and manpower among others will be taken care of at our end. The arrangement reached us on March 30 and then the production work was started on April 11, 2020, and we have already manufactured around 1,250 ventilators till date. Each of their products will be delivered to M/S HLL, which is not an issue as they will be delivered in a gap of one or two days. We are supposed to deliver 10,000 ventilators to HLL and we wish to complete its production before May end.

Q: Has Motherson Sumi helped you in producing these ventilators?

A: It is such that many vendors have helped us in making the components of the ventilators. When it comes to M/s Motherson Sumi, then it has helped us in two ways (i) They have operations in China – we were facing difficulties in bringing certain auto parts that were available in China – and they have helped in bringing them to India and (ii) there was a need of manpower, space and financing support to AgVa and Motherson Sumi has helped AgVa in these things as well and the work of assembling the same is being carried out in their premises itself. Actually, the area was AgVa is based has been listed among containment zone.

Q: You have got permission from the Haryana government to start production at your Manesar plant in a single shift. What's the status there and do you have plans to do so? 

A: We have started working on the safety measures that are essential at Manesar. But we can’t start the production work because the supply of many components is not possible at present as the maximum of our vendors is based in the containment/red zones, due to which they will not be able to produce. Secondly, sales options are not available as the dealers have not been allowed to open their sales points. So, the absence of sales points and components will not allow us to restart the production work.

Q: Government hasn't done anything so far for the sector. What are your immediate expectations from the government in terms of the sector-level package?

A: The government is well aware of the situation as well as other compulsions. I think the government will thoughtfully create a package and will come forward – in these circumstances – in accordance with its capabilities.  

Q: What is the situation of your dealers now? You have already transferred Rs 800-900 crore to support cash flows. Do you have more such plans if there is any further extension of the lockdown?

A: This dealer support or support to anyone else is decided by the company’s management that’s why I can’t say anything about it.  

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Q: From a company perspective, what are your thoughts in terms of cost rationalization, job cuts, and vendor payments among others?

A: There are no job cuts; therefore I don’t have any answer related to it. Every company wants to rationalize the cost while manufacturing the vehicles and increase productivity and it should be done.