New Delhi, May 1 -- Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country's automotive market leader, has its six-year-old partnership with Toyota Kirloskar Motor Ltd to thank for beating the blues in the previous financial year (FY25). Maruti Suzuki would have seen practically flat (0.2%) growth in number of cars sold in the fiscal, but it got a filip from selling an additional 106,000 units to Toyota in a rebadging partnership, according to data from the company. This additional sale helped Maruti clock nearly 3% growth in the fiscal, selling 1.9 million passenger vehicles (PVs, comprising cars and SUVs). That handsomely beat the 2% industry growth of PVs in FY25. To be sure, Maruti's FY25 sales to Toyota saw an 82% jump from 58,612 units in the preceding fiscal year. Under an agreement signed in 2019, four car models developed and manufactured by Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, which has41%share of the four-wheeler market in India, are also sold with the Toyota badge. In turn, Maruti got the right to use the hybrid vehicle platform developed by Toyota under this partnership, and could also rebadge Toyota's Innova to a Maruti name (Invictus). Maruti's sales to Toyota started in the financial year 2019-20 and have grown to about 6% of the company's overall sales, a strong growth as per analysts. "The incremental sales to Toyota helped act as a good buffer for growth for the company (Maruti)," said Mumuksh Mandlesha, equity research analyst at Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers Ltd. "The arrangement has worked well for the two companies. Maruti has got access to technology and the network of Toyota, while Toyota saved the cost of developing these vehicles on their own and increased the product portfolio in the compact segment." Queries sent to Maruti Suzuki and Toyota remained unanswered till press time. In car rebadging partnerships, the original model developed by a manufacturer is sold to another company, which then uses its own brand logo on the vehicle and sells it in the market. There have been several examples of such partnerships in the past, such as Renault-Nissan, Renault-Mahindra and Skoda-Volkswagen, among others. Such rebadging has generally not worked in the Indian market, but in this case Toyota's perceived aspirational brand value has worked in both companies' favour, according to experts....