Hero MotoCorp on Tuesday said it was aiming for leadership in the scooters market and expects new product launches to help it achieve the target.
The country’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer is already a leader in motorcycles, but in scooters, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) leads with around 59 per cent market share (year-to-date) and has sold around 11.39 lakh units between April and August this year. Hero has a market share of around 52 per cent in motorcycles and about 13 per cent in the scooter segment.
“It (leadership) is not going to happen overnight, but we will keep improving our market share. Clearly, the ambition, the objective and the target is to go for leadership. We, at Hero, will definitely go for leadership,” Pawan Munjal, Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Hero MotoCorp, told reporters on the sidelines of the new launches.
However, he declined to give any timeline for the targeted achievement.
On Tuesday, the company launched two scooters — Maestro Edge and Duet — both 110cc models. The Maestro Edge will be available in the market from October 13 with two variants LX and VX priced at ₹49,500 and ₹50,700, respectively (ex-showroom, Delhi).
Duet will go to dealers soon after that and the company said it will announce its price during that time.
The new scooters are built on a completely new engine (110cc) and chassis platform by the technology and innovation team at Hero. The Maestro Edge made its global debut recently in Colombia (named Dash for that market), during the inauguration of Hero’s first overseas manufacturing facility.
The company is setting up a research and development centre in Jaipur and plans to inaugurate it on January 14, 2016, Munjal said.
Hero manufactures 60,000 scooters a month on an average at present for the domestic market, and another 10,000 for exports.
Hero manufactures scooters in its plants in Gurgaon (Haryana) and Neemrana (Rajasthan). Once it starts the Halol plant (Gujarat), the company will begin manufacturing scooters there, Munjal added.