Mahindra 2 Wheelers had already opened a world class Research & Development centre in Pune in the month of July last year. In fact it was this center that aided the company in coming up with new engines for its recently launched commuter bikes Pantero and Centuro. Now, the interesting news is that Yamaha has also followed suit.
Called officially as Yamaha Motor Research and Development India Pvt. Ltd. (YMRI), the plant is located in Surajpur, Uttar Pradesh. This center would aid the company’s manufacturing competitiveness in the country. Now that the company wants to develop India as its new production base for most of it ASEAN markets, this centre would be of great help to Yamaha in coming up with more products and at more competitive prices.
This is done in a bid to get aggressive in the Indian market. The function of the India Procurement Center established last year has been transferred and incorporated into the new company and will now operate as the India Integrated Development Center.
YMRI was established in February this year to function as the core of the second Integrated Development Center, following the establishment of the ASEAN Integrated Development Center in Thailand last year. The YMRI will be the fifth overseas R&D headquarters for Yamaha Motor Group following Italy, Taiwan, China, and Thailand.
Speaking on the occasion Mr. Hiroyuki Suzuki, CEO & Managing Director, India Yamaha Motor Pvt. Ltd. said, “We at Yamaha strongly believe in constant innovation. The R&D centre will help us to put channelized effort in conceptualization of new models and parts keeping in mind the changing customer preferences. This will help us not only to develop models and parts for India market but also to develop models and parts for export markets as well”.
Mr. Toshikazu Kobayashi, Managing Director said that this step will significantly help Yamaha in reducing the final cost at the same time making them flexible in their products and markets. The company is currently focusing more on its upcoming Chennai plant where exclusive products for India will be manufactured based on model platforms developed in Japan.
This is a very interesting move from the Japanese major who has been in India since a long time but haven’t had a really huge rally at the sales charts till now. What will, we biking enthusiasts will gain out it remains to be see but we definitely sense something good is going to happen.
Naren
