Honda Motor Co sees 30 pc motorbike revenue from India by 2020
News | May 24, 2012Honda Motor Co launched their 1st mass-market motor cycle in India & their cheapest motor bike world wide recently, as it looks to tap the emerging low-cost markets including doubling the share of India of the motor cycle revenue by the year 2020.
Honda, ended their 26-years joint venture along with India Hero MotoCorp in the month of March in last year with $851 million deal, recently announced fresh investment about 20 billion rupees (or $373 million) and it is now looking to get better of the former partner, which is current leader of market.
Honda’s 110cc Dream Yuga motor cycle, it’s first for India’s 75-125cc segment of commuter, will be
starting @ Rs. 44,642 (or $830) & will be competing along with Splendor brand of Honda, which is biggest-selling bike in India.
Honda is expecting India to account for about 30% of the global revenues of motorcycle by the year 2020, up from current 13 percent, says Keita Muramatsu, who is president @ Honda Motorycle & Scooter in India at launch of the bike’s at New Delhi.
Yadvinder Singh Guleria, the marketing head at Honda in India said that their long term target is to get to #1 spot in India by the year 2020. He says that this company targets sales of about 300,000 Dream Yugas in financial current year which ends at March 2013.
The entry-level bikes of commuters account for about 70 percent of domestic market in country which sold more than 10 million bikes for last financial year, and was 2nd to just China.
Under this agreement of joint venture, Honda got banned from competing directly with vehicles of Hero Honda. Foray of Honda in to arena of mass-market is a part of larger assault from Japanese motorcycle manufacturers ramping up the capacity & targeting the volumes in market which grew about 14 percent for 12 months to March of 2012.
Yamaha Motor Co in this week had announced new factory of $280 million for India for almost tripling the capacity to about 2.8 million motor cycles by the year 2018, and Suzuki Motor Corp, which will most likely launch mass-market offering in this month, is making new factory for taking the India capacity close to around a million motorcycles by the year 2014.
The local rivals are now taking a note of this. Bajaj Auto, which is India’s #2 but is beaten in to 3rd place during March from Honda, recently launched souped-up model of the flagship commuter bike, called Discover. Honda sold about 220,487 2-wheelers for India during March, fifty percent more as compared to same month in the last year, & marginally a bit above Bajaj. Japanese company, sells some passenger cars for India, is now constructing a 3rd factory of 2 wheelers in this country. This new plant will begin production early in the next year & take the total capacity to four million 2-wheelers.
