Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt Ltd (HMSI), the Indian subsidiary of Honda Motor Company of Japan, has set its an ambitious sales target of 4 million two-wheelers during fiscal 2013-14, a growth of 90 per cent over the sales of 2011-12. For the present fiscal, the company has set a target of achieving 28.5 per cent growth at 2.7 million units, 50 per cent of which would be scooters, a senior company official said.
“Last year we sold 2.1 million units of two-wheelers in India and we are running a huge backlog of vehicles due to capacity constraints. We are in the process of building our third manufacturing plant at Narasapur near Bangalore, which we will commission by April or May next year. With this, our capacity will cross 4 million units mark and that would help us achieve 4 million unit sales mark next fiscal,” Tomoaki Nagayama, Dy Director — sales & marketing, HMSI told Business Standard .
He said the company is presently investing Rs 1,500 crore to set up the third plant near Bangalore, which will have an initial capacity of 1.2 million units per annum. The capacity would be scaled up to 1.8 million units subsequently.
HMSI’s other two plants are located at Manesar in Haryana with a capacity of 1.6 million units and Tapukara in Rajasthan with 1.2 million units. In 2011-12, HMSI’s sales grew by about 31 per cent to 2.10 million units. With the completion of Narasapur plant, HMSI’s cumulative investment in India would cross Rs 5,000 crore mark, he added.
HMSI plans to manufacture its most popular scooter, Honda Activa along with Dream Yuga, a commuter bike launched just now at its Narasapur plant. Activa contributes almost 60 per cent to its sales in south India.
“We have planned expansion in south India as almost 30-40 per cent of our national sales come from the South. With the commissioning of our third plant, we would bring down the waiting period on some our vehicles from about two months to less than one month,” Nagayama said. A majority of its components suppliers are also moving to Narasapur.
“The growth in sales this year would come from our mass market bike, Dream Yuga and Activa, our most popular scooter. We intend to sell 300,000 units of Dream Yuga this year. Till early this year, we have seen a lot of demand for Activa, which have been converted into orders. We will be delivering those orders this year. We expect big growth to come from scooters as we have highest market share in the scooter industry,” Ashish Choudhary, South Region Sales Manager, HMSI, said.
He said HMSI presently has about 14-15 per cent market share in the Indian two-wheeler market and it aims to increase it substantially next year when the company’s third plant goes on stream.
“There are many big plans in our journey of becoming No.1 in Indian two-wheeler industry. We will introduce many new models as and when the demand comes up. We are currently working on several new models for Indian market at our R&D centre, which will be opened in October at Manesar,” he added.
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