R C Bhargava: Maruti's Share Hit a 13-Year Low. It Still Sold a Record 24 Lakh Cars.

Maruti Suzuki, India's largest carmaker, closed FY26 with its share of the passenger vehicle market at 39.26%, according to SIAM data. It was the lowest in thirteen years.

It was not a one-year story.

Why Maruti's Market Share Fell

FY26 was the third straight year the number had fallen. Maruti had held more than half the market as recently as FY19.

The reason sat inside the industry's own shift. Utility vehicles, SUVs and MPVs, grew to about 67% of India's passenger vehicle sales in FY26. Maruti Suzuki's share inside that segment was below 25%. Every rival gaining ground was gaining it there. Mahindra & Mahindra, for one, more than doubled its overall share in five years, to 14.21%, and became the country's second-largest carmaker.

Who Is R C Bhargava?

R C Bhargava is the chairman of Maruti Suzuki. A former IAS officer, he joined the company in 1981, when it was a government venture with Suzuki that had yet to build a car, and later served as its managing director. He has been chairman since 2007.

Forty-five years after he joined, at 91, he was still in the chairman's seat when the FY26 number came in.

What He Said Instead of Defending the Number

When the question came up after the FY26 results in April 2026, he did not defend the market share figure. He questioned why it mattered so much.

"So please don't harp on market share," he said.

His argument was that a car company should make sure the manufacturing capacity it has installed is fully used, and that it sells those cars at a reasonable profit. Gaining share, he said, would need capacity to be added at a much faster rate. Maruti was already building at two sites at once, at Kharkhoda in Haryana and a new site in Gujarat, and planned capital spending of about ₹14,000 crore for the year.

Most leaders watching share erode reach for a headline SUV launch or a price war. Bhargava pointed to a different set of numbers.

The Numbers Nobody Asked About

In the year its share hit that 13-year low, Maruti Suzuki sold 24.22 lakh vehicles, its highest ever, up from 22.34 lakh in FY25. Consolidated revenue from operations reached a record ₹1,83,382 crore, up 19.9%. It exported close to 4.5 lakh vehicles, more than any other carmaker in India.

Profit did not keep pace. Consolidated net profit rose only about 1%, to ₹14,680 crore, as costs climbed. The record was in volumes and revenue, not margins.

Its answer on electric cars followed the same logic. Maruti Suzuki's first EV, the e Vitara, was unveiled in January 2025 and launched in India in February 2026, priced from ₹10.99 lakh under a battery subscription plan. Exports began first. By June 2026, nearly 36,000 had been shipped overseas, about five times the roughly 7,000 dispatched to Indian dealers.

Bhargava has not called any of this a comeback.

The Boardroom Lesson: Market Share Is One Number, Not the Scorecard

Market share is the number analysts and the press quote back at a company. It is easy to read and easy to compare. But it is a ratio, and a ratio can fall while everything underneath it grows.

A shrinking share can still sit on top of a record year. The two numbers were never really arguing with each other.

The harder question for a board is not whether share is falling. It is whether the company is losing the customers it actually wants, at the margins it needs, in the segments that will matter in five years.

Common Mistakes Boards Make When Market Share Falls

Boards of market leaders in autos, consumer goods and other scale businesses tend to make the same three errors when share starts to slip.

They treat share as the only scorecard. A leader can lose share while selling more, earning more and exporting more. Judge the business on volume, revenue and profit alongside share, not instead of them.

They buy share back with price. A price war wins headlines and costs margin. Maruti's flat profit in a record revenue year shows how little room there is for that.

They ignore where the share is going. Maruti's share loss sat almost entirely in utility vehicles. A board that only watches the headline number misses which segment, and which customers, it is actually losing.

A Framework for Judging a Leader When Share Falls

When we brief boards on a CXO search for a market leader under pressure, we push for three specific checks.

• Split the share number by segment. Find out where the share is going. A fall concentrated in one fast-growing segment needs a product answer, not a sales push.
• Look at capacity, volume and profit together. If the plants are full and volumes are at a record, the constraint may be capacity, not demand. Ask leadership candidates which number they would manage to, and why.
• Hire for the segment you are losing. Winning back utility vehicle buyers takes product, marketing and sales leaders who have built in that segment, not just leaders from the segment the company already dominates.

Why This Belongs in the Boardroom, Not Just the Business Pages

This sits alongside the story we told of Gopal Vittal at Airtel, who let millions of low-paying customers go and was judged on revenue per user, not subscriber count. And it is the other side of the story we told of Anish Shah at Mahindra, one of the rivals that gained the share Maruti lost.

The share number will always be the first one quoted. Boards that hire well ask what sits underneath it.