The country’s largest two-wheeler maker Hero MotoCorp plans to enter new markets globally, including Mexico and Nigeria, as it eyes 1 crore unit sales by 2017-18.
“We already are present in a number of countries in Latin America, South-East Asia and Africa. I think we are already there in around 26-28 countries and as we speak, this month, we plan to enter the biggest market in Africa, Nigeria,” Hero MotoCorp CMD Pawan Munjal told reporters here.
Very soon the company will also be going to Mexico, he added.
“We also expect domestic sales to pick up, especially in the rural areas,” Munjal said.
Saying that in India the market is not at its best, he said: “We are hoping that things start getting better especially in the rural sector. As far as breaching the 10-million sales mark, I think we have talked about reaching the mark by 2017-18.”
Hero MotoCorp separated from Honda Motor Co Ltd in 2011 and since then has augmented its global presence.
In August 2013, it announced plans to enter 50 markets by 2020 with a target of 20 manufacturing facilities across the globe and an overall annual turnover of ₹60,000 crore.
The company aims at getting 10 per cent of annual sales from export markets, at around one million units, by 2017.
Hero MotoCorp has set a cumulative sales target of 100 million units by 2020, having already crossed the 50-million milestone.
During the last fiscal, the company sold 6,631,826 units and said it expects single-digit growth during the current fiscal.
In India, the company currently has four plants — Gurgaon and Dharuhera (Haryana), Neemrana (Rajasthan) and Haridwar (Uttarakhand).
As of last quarter, the company had an installed capacity to produce 81 lakh units per annum from the four production facilities.