Not passing entire rise in cost to customers, says Maruti's Shashank Srivastava

Shashank Srivastava, ED-marketing and sales at Maruti Suzuki, on Tuesday said that the company is not passing the entire increase in the raw material cost to the customers.

The comments came after the company recently announced a hike in car prices with effect from April citing rising raw material prices.

“We are not passing the entire cost to the consumer. We can only pass on a part of the increased cost because it is difficult at this time when the market is recovering and it's getting strength month-after-month. Therefore, we should not compromise that by arbitrarily increasing or passing on the entire cost in form of price to the consumer," said Srivastava in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

"The price hike will be across the board... As far as quantum of price is concerned, we have not yet decided the quantum but it appears that because the input cost has risen dramatically, it is going to be substantial,” he said.

Talking about demand, Srivastava said though there is no option for the company but to increase the prices, it will make sure that the demand pattern is not disturbed.

“We did take a price hike in January but it was very small compared to the increase in cost... We will have to walk the fine line between topline and bottomline. We have to see that the demand pattern is not unduly disturbed, but the cost increase as far as input cost is concerned is so high that there is no option but for us to reluctantly increase the prices in April," he said.

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