Maruti to hire at least 2,300 in 2 yrs

The country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India today said it will hire at least 2,300 people, mainly for its upcoming two new plants in Manesar, within next two years.

With induction of these people, the company's workforce will expand by about 27% to nearly 11,000 employees.

"At this moment, we are hiring a minimum of 1,500 people in this fiscal. These people will be taken on board for different verticals like manufacturing, marketing, supply chain and R&D," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Managing Executive Officer (Administration) S Y Siddiqui told PTI.

MSI had announced to invest over Rs 3,625 crore to set up the two new plants with 2.5 lakh annual capacities each at the Manesar facility. The company is aiming to open the second unit in Manesar by September-October this year, while the third one is scheduled to be operational in FY13.

When asked about the plan for the third plant in the facility, Siddiqui said: "Apart from the planned recruitment for this fiscal, we will hire about 750 people alone for the third plant coming up in Manesar... This will be in FY13."

He said the company will hire more people over and above the planned recruitment for the third unit in next fiscal, but the outlay has not been finalised yet.

Besides fresh investment at Manesar, the company is investing Rs 2,500 crore for its K-series engine plant and setting up a dedicated R&D facility at Rohtak.

Elaborating on the hiring plan for this year, Siddiqui said: "With the new plants coming up at Manesar, we are hiring 746 young technicians, 150 diploma engineer trainees and 96 laterals for the second unit."

The rest of the planned hiring for this fiscal will be done for other divisions of the company, he added.

The company will bring in the new people under various routes of trainees such as technicians, diploma engineers, graduate engineers, executives and managements, he said.

At present, MSI, which is 54.2% owned by Suzuki Motor Corp (SMC), employs 8,617 people as on March 31, 2011.

The company has an annual capacity of 8.5 lakh units at its Gurgaon plant, while the existing plant in Manesar can produce 3.5 lakh units annually, with the overall capacity totaling to 12 lakh units per year.

The carmaker had said it ramped up production by about 10% to over 1.1 lakh units every month from October last year, taking its total annual output to 14 lakh units for FY12.

In FY11, the company's sales soared 24.81% to 12,71,005 units from 10,18,365 units in the previous fiscal.

Last month, the company had reached the milestone of producing one crore vehicles since its inception, nearly 27 years since it first rolled out M800 from Gurgaon.

MSI Chairman R C Bhargava had said the company is aiming to achieve the feat of producing a crore vehicle for the second time in the next 6-7 years with the opening of its two new plants at Manesar.

The shares of the company were trading 1.27% down at Rs 1,238.30 during late afternoon on the Bombay Stock Exchange.