Maruti Suzuki India feels the Calcutta market has the most potential to grow in the future with 50 per cent of car buyers here being first-time buyers.

While annually passenger car sales in West Bengal is a little less than a lakh at 97,000 units, about 60,000 units are sold in Calcutta every year. Hatches contribute 53 per cent to the sales while SUVs contribute 43.4 per cent. The state accounts for 3.1 per cent of the all-India sales.

Maruti Suzuki India sells 45,000 cars annually in West Bengal accounting for 46 per cent market share in the state. In Calcutta, the company sells 25,000 units annually.

“In the state, Calcutta, Siliguri, Asansol and Kharagpur are our best-selling markets,” said Shashank Srivastava, executive director MSIL, who was in the city on Wednesday to inaugurate Nexa and Arena showrooms.

The company inaugurated two Arena outlets in Rajarhat and Kamalgazi and two Nexa sales channels in Rajarhat and BT Road. The Rajarhat Nexa and Arena showrooms are company owned dealer operated (CODO) showrooms. “We started having these showrooms about three years back. We purchase the land and create the showroom according to our specifications and hand it over to the dealer,” said Srivastava.

“Going forward since real estate prices are going to be high we appreciate it is going to be hard for our dealer principals to create infrastructure. While we need to be near our customers so we decided to have CODO showrooms,” explained Srivastava. Maruti has such showrooms in Mumbai, Wayanad and Jaipur apart from Calcutta.