Yamaha to Develop Its Global Products in India

Indian automotive industry is one of the fast emerging markets in the world and the world is looking at it, big automotive companies with huge wallets are walking-in and investing in the country, and the existing companies are expanding their Indian operations. Recently, Japanese bike major Yamaha opened its 5th R&D center in India, and now the company is planning to take the made-in-India brand global. Yamaha is planning to develop and manufacture 'global models' in India, which will be sold across the globe in markets like Asian and European countries and its home market Japan.

"India is a low-cost market , but we are not looking at just that. We want to develop sporty and stylish models from here and these would be for European markets and Asian markets," Hiroyuki Yanagi , president and CEO of Yamaha Motor Co told TOI here. Yamaha is seeing India as a hub for developing and manufacturing "commuter" bikes and bikes, having engines ranging between 100cc and 200cc. Yamaha will export these bikes to markets like South America and even Japan. Yamaha is already exporting R15 and 150cc FZ series bikes to Japan. Meanwhile, Yamaha will also try to gain its lost share, which was gained by likes of Hero MotoCorp (formerly Hero Honda), Bajaj Auto, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India and TVS.

For this, Yamaha will be launching new models aimed at both the domestic market as well as overseas. Yamaha has also ventured into Scooter segment with its scooter Ray and launched a new male-targeted variant Ray Z recently. Yanagi said that the company is expecting sales to grow at a rapid pace in India, even though the base is relatively small at the moment. Yamaha operates in India through its fully owned Indian arm India Yamaha Motor (IYM), which sold 4.9 lakh units in 2012 and is among the top 10 operations of Yamaha globally at present. This included 1.4 lakh units sold overseas. Yanagi further said that with rapid expansion and new model introductions, he expects India to become one of the company's top-five markets by 2016. The company would be rolling out at least two-to-three new models and variants every year, and these would be both in motorcycle and scooter segments .

Yamaha is also developing an affordable commuter for India and other emerging markets, which is likely to be a sub $500 or below Rs 27,000. The company in April announced the establishment of a new motorcycle R&D set-up at Surajpur,and this is Yamaha's fifth overseas research centre on the lines of similar ones in Italy, Taiwan, China and Thailand .

Source: ET