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Maruti’s Late EV Bet
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Good Morning. Maruti Suzuki is finally entering the electric vehicle (EV) space. A household name, the OEM is entering the EV race quite late, with its rivals having already claimed ground. It’s eVitara will launch in an already crowded and cautious market where pricing, scale, and supporting infrastructure matter much to the buyer. Will India’s biggest carmaker bend the EV curve despite its late start?
India’s equity indices ended on a higher note on Tuesday. The BSE Sensex closed at 84,273.92, gaining 208.17 points or 0.25%. The NSE Nifty50 closed at 25,935.15, gaining 67.85 points or 0.26%.
In other news, weddings and rural buys spur auto sales. Meanwhile, on this week’s Build On Blockchain, how the technology can help Indian exporters with strict European Union (EU) quality checks.
Maruti’s EV Gamble: Can It Dent The Market Despite Late Entry?
What
Until a couple of years ago, Maruti Suzuki wasn’t too keen to enter the EV market.
RC Bhargava, the company’s chairman, had brushed aside the urgency to join the EV race, calling the segment niche and citing the prohibitive costs of lithium-ion technology. His preference was hybrid cars, which he argued offered a more practical route to reducing carbon footprints in a developing economy.
The Japanese carmaker is now on the threshold of rolling out its first electric vehicle, the premium eVitara SUV, in India’s domestic market. Set to launch early this year, the e-SUV faces a daunting challenge. Maruti, a brand built on being everywhere at once, is uncharacteristically late to the EV race.
“There is always someone coming before you. That doesn’t mean you are delayed,” Bhargava told The Core.
The market it enters is slow-moving and crowded. Competitors like Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, JSW MG Motor, and Mahindra & Mahindra have already established a lead, catering to early adopters and building proprietary ecosystems.
Why It Matters
Maruti’s entry can give a fillip to the EV category since it is the market leader with an extensive consumer reach.
“Once Maruti starts selling the eVitara, they can turn around the whole EV story,” said Puneet Gupta, director, automotive, S&P Global Mobility, adding that the Japanese carmaker can explore a strategy for marketing their EVs through a separate network similar to Tata Motors.
While the eVitara is Maruti’s first electric model, the real shift may come with more affordable products. Currently, only the Tata Punch, Tiago EV, and MG Comet occupy the bracket below Rs 10 lakh.
“Only Maruti Suzuki has the heft to offer mainstream pure-electric vehicles below 10 lakh rupees to bring large-scale adoption,” said Avik Chattopadhyay, co-founder of Expereal India, a branding and marketing strategy consultancy firm.
What Challenges Will It Face?
Maruti’s gameplan to crack the EV market is to step up localisation of the electric powertrain and battery pack in a phased manner. This will enable competitive pricing.
A major hurdle to that aggressive pricing is the lithium-ion battery pack. Currency battery cells are imported because the rare earth materials required are sourced primarily from China, a supply chain that remains volatile. Last year, China imposed restrictions on rare earth magnets following US tariff hikes, causing a global shortage.
The broader market environment also remains volatile. After the GST 2.0 tax changes, the price gap between traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars and EVs has narrowed. Small petrol cars (under 1200cc) now see a GST of 18%, down from 28%, while EVs remain at 5%.
However, Partho Banerjee, senior executive officer, marketing and sales of Maruti Suzuki, cautioned that EV penetration may actually be dipping. “EV penetration will grow when households start buying it as their primary car. At present, it is bought more as a secondary car,” he said.
However, it will face tough competition from India’s other OEMs, as well as hesitancy towards EV adoption.
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After India’s Big EU Turn, Blockchain Matters Even More For Exporters
What?
Indian exporters will have to raise the product standards to meet the EU norms and avoid rejection at the checkpoint, as India has now signed a trade agreement with them.
EU policies are super strict. If the quality of exported goods does not match EU standards, they are often destroyed, instead of being returned.
Exporters who attach no importance to quality have little room to manoeuvre. Even those producing high-quality goods must be able to electronically demonstrate compliance with scientific evidence and proper documentation, not just claims.
How?
One easy way to show compliance is to register every step of the production process on a blockchain.
Let’s say you are an exporter of mango pulp, and your client in Brussels insists on third-party certificates, temperature logs, and processing methods.
To prove you are a credible supplier, you have to spend money and time. If the client is not convinced even after all your efforts, the whole deal might go for a toss.
Let’s suppose you already have blockchain integrated into the supply chain system. Now, every step — sourcing of the fruit, plant location and machinery, processing, packing, quality checks, transit temperatures, and customs clearance — is recorded on the blockchain.
As a result, when your client scans a code, he sees the whole journey and pays up without raising any doubts or questions.
The reason the trust is near-absolute is that once data is entered on the blockchain, it cannot be changed or manipulated.
This is already being done in India by several players such as StarAgri and TraceX Technologies, which use blockchain in parts of their agri supply chain to record where produce comes from, how it is stored, and how it moves before reaching buyers.
This series is brought to you in partnership with Algorand India.
27.22 lakh
That’s how many vehicles India’s auto industry retailed in January, with an 18% year-on-year surge. This broad-based rally, according tothe Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA), was powered by robust rural cash flows from harvests and weddings, alongside sustained post-GST 2.0 momentum.
Overview: Two-wheelers (+21%) and tractors (+23%) led the charge, while passenger vehicles (PV) grew 7%, crossing the half-million mark. Notably, rural PV demand expanded 14.4%, significantly outpacing urban growth. Commercial vehicles grew 15% on improving freight sentiment and replacement-led buying across tonnage bands. However, construction equipment remained under pressure, dropping 21% due to high-base effects and segment recalibration.
Setup: Overall, PV inventory softened to a healthy 32–34 days, signalling better channel discipline. Dealer sentiment for the next three months is decisively optimistic, with nearly 80% of dealers expecting continued growth.
India’s government on Tuesday tightened online content rules, cutting the takedown deadline for unlawful material to three hours from 36, in a move that raises compliance pressure on platforms such as Meta, YouTube and X. The amendments to India’s 2021 IT rules also introduced a far wider framework for regulating AI and synthetic content, beyond the headline labelling change.
Fast Facts: While dropping an earlier proposal to mandate AI labels covering 10% of content, the rules require prominent labelling, user declarations on whether content is AI-generated, and verification by platforms using automated tools. They also mandate permanent metadata or provenance markers to trace synthetic content, and bar platforms from allowing labels to be altered or removed.
What’s Next? The rules tighten other timelines, shorten grievance redress periods, expand automated filtering obligations, and link moderation failures to criminal laws, potentially threatening safe-harbour protections. The regulations take effect on February 20.
Dark Fleet Crackdown
The Indian Coast Guard has intercepted and seized three oil tankers—the Chiltern, Asphalt Star, and Stellar Ruby, according to Bloomberg. The vessels, all sanctioned by the US last year for ties to the Iranian oil trade, were caught conducting illicit ship-to-ship transfers to evade customs duties and regulatory oversight.
Flashpoint: This unprecedented crackdown signals India’s hardening stance on sanctioned maritime trade, coinciding with the US-India trade deal. Under the agreement finalised last week, the US slashed tariffs on Indian goods from 50% to 18% in exchange for India's commitment to halt Russian crude imports and shift energy sourcing to American providers.
Setting: The apprehended vessels are currently being escorted to Mumbai for further investigation by law enforcement agencies.
Portfolios Turn Cautious
As inflows into India’s equity mutual funds eased for a second straight month in January, investors channelled more money into gold-linked products instead. Specifically, fresh equity inflows fell as retail investors grew cautious amid volatile markets and elevated valuations, even as systematic investment plan (SIP) contributions remained largely steady.
The Scoop: The data suggests investors did not exit equities altogether but slowed new lump-sum allocations. At the same time, demand for gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) rose, reflecting a preference for defensive assets during periods of heightened uncertainty.
Forecast: The shift highlights a broader rebalancing rather than a retreat from financial markets, with households spreading risk across asset classes instead of aggressively adding equity exposure.
Textile Heat
Bangladesh’s new trade deal with the US, lowering tariffs to 19% and allowing zero duty on garments made using US cotton and fibres, sharpens competition for India’s textile sector. While India has secured an 18% tariff, slightly lower than Dhaka’s zero-duty access in select categories, could undercut Indian exporters in ready-made garments, especially given Bangladesh’s lower labour costs.
Flashpoint: However, the advantage is limited: the concession applies only to products using US inputs, not all Bangladeshi exports. India retains strengths in scale and diversification, spanning yarn, fabrics, home and technical textiles, and enjoys a tariff edge over Vietnam.
Outcome: Crucially, India remains a key supplier of cotton, yarn and intermediates to Bangladesh, ensuring continued interlinkages despite heightened rivalry in the US market.
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Foreign Portfolio Investments Are Keeping The Market Steady
On Episode 795 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to C S Vigneshwar, President of the Federation of Automobile Dealer’s Association (FADA) as well as Amit Goel, Co-founder & Chief Global Strategist at PACE 360.
Foreign portfolio investments are keeping the market steady, despite whiffs of negative news
Action in the high seas picks up as shadow tankers are seized by India
Investments in gold ETFs overtake equities. What does that mean?
The interesting reason why entry-level car sales have shot up
Bangladesh gets a leg up with a preferential deal for garment exports to the US
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