With a new manufacturing facility coming up in Chennai by January 2014, Yamaha Motor Company Ltd plans to make India its global sourcing hub.
The Japanese company known for sporty motorcycles and scooters, both in the racing circuits and commuter segment, has placed India on their strategic map bringing their latest technologies and new models.
It is looking at exporting a third of the production supplied from Indian manufacturing units located at Noida, Faridabad and a new one coming up at Chennai.
India Yamaha Motor, a 100 per cent subsidiary of the Japanese company, is setting up a new manufacturing base in India at Chennai at an outlay of Rs 1,500 crore. This will take the total installed capacity to 2.8 million units per annum.
The President and CEO of Yamaha Motor Company, Hiroyuki Yanagi, said bikes made in India will be exported to other markets around the world. “We are aggressively transferring the latest technologies to India to accelerate the development of the two-wheeler industry,” he said.
While the Indian arm increases the manufacturing capacity to 2.8 million units per annum by 2018, a third of that production will be exported, he said.
The company sees the Indian scooter market as promising. About 2.4 million scooters were sold in India in 2011 and this is expected to double by 2015.
Therefore, the company has set up a separate assembly line for scooters which is run entirely by women employees. It has also developed a training programme — Yamaha Female Riding Training programme — which will be set up across the country in a phased manner.
According to the Yamaha Motor Survey, the Indian motorcycle market has annual demand of about 13 million units. In the first half this year, more than 7 million two-wheelers were sold.
There is a likelihood of further accelerated demand due to strong consumer spend and population. This demand is expected to surpass China’s by the end of 2012, making India the largest motorcycle market.