Maruti's cars to cost more from January

India's  largest car maker, Maruti, who has seen labour issues a couple of months back, is now marred with more challenges...  Maruti says input costs are going up and margins are shrinking. Swati Khandelwal Jain of CNBC-TV18 caught up with Mayank Pareekh, managing executive officer- marketing and sales, Maruti Suzuki to get his view on the way forward for the company and the industry.

Below is the edited transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying video. Q: How will you close the year and do you see any respite to the current slowdown in the auto sector?
A: This year was not really good with additional pressure from things like fuel prices and interest rates. General sentiment has not been so good. More so, especially for Maruti, the labour unrest which we had, we lost a lot of vehicles there. We think for this year, it will be degrowth, but things should start improving soon. Growth recovery this time would be slow and unlike last time, it would be slow and steady. Last time it was just slowdown in growth. Q: Profitability has also taken a hit for most auto players. Having lost so much production and with input costs going up, how do you see the margins panning out for Maruti?
A: Naturally because of input cost going up, we have pressure. More than that, the issue is about exchange rates. Rupee has depreciated almost 18% in last couple of months and that is impacting us. So volumes are not really seen having a big surge in near future. We will have to look for price corrections. Q: So what you are saying is that there could be a price hike in the month of January as indicated by some of the automakers already?
A: Absolutely. We are confirming that that we will do that in month of January.