Yamaha has been doing good business out here in the India sub – continent. The Japanese brand has been a great ht in the premium segment which bears the 150cc bikes. Like every other company, Yamaha has also been working on a target which is capturing a 10 per cent market share by just three years from now on. In order to achieve this target, the company has decided to expand its dealer base across the length and breadth of the country.
Yamaha is planning to increase its dealership centers to 450 and customer touch point centers to 1400 by the end of this year. The company is also planning to bring in more models that would assist them in attaining their target which is as mentioned above.
This is part of the Yamaha’s “major expansion drive” which would see introduction of new products as well as dealership network expansion, India Yamaha Motor director, sales and marketing, Mr. Jun Nakata, told PTI in a recent interview.
The company is also working on setting up more dealers in the rural part of India where there is a great scope for expansion. “We are already in the process of expanding our sales and service network across the country to get closer to our customer base. We are expanding dealer branches and appointing Yamaha Bike corners in rural areas to penetrate these markets,” he said. He then added, “We currently have close to 400 dealers and 1,200 customer touch points… we plan to increase to 450 dealers and 1,400 touch points by the end of this year.”
The market share of Yamaha is presently 3 per cent. The launch of new scooter – Ray would help the company in opening up the scooter segment for the company. The Ray is sheerly promoted as a women friendly scooter, being endorsed by Bollywood actress Deepika Padugone. The company is also setting up a totally women operated assembly line exclusively for the manufacturing of Ray in the upcoming Chennai plant. The company has great hopes on this brand. Ray has also been successful to an extent by winning a lot of accolades and awards soon after its launch in the month of September 2012. 35,000 units of Ray has already been sold since its launch.
“With the recent entry into the scooter segment, we’re looking at promoting ourselves in this segment to a large extent. We will continue to invest in development of products that demonstrate the global Yamaha image and live up to the true Yamaha DNA i.e. Performance, Innovation & Design,” he said.
The company is also planning to ramp up its production capacity in its Chennai plant to an estimated figure of 2.8 Mn units by the end of 2018. Mr. Nakata stated, “….. which will help us meet the expected rise in demand”. Yamaha targets to sell 7,00,000 units in 2013, against the 4,90,000 units achieved in 2012, Nakata said.
When questioned about the company’s plans on the high end bikes of 600+ cc segment, he was not too sure on the plans and did not reveal much of info on it. He just said, “was certainly looking up as the industry witnessed a 35 per cent growth in sales for bikes in this segment (600cc and above)”.
Towards the end of the interview, he added, “This can be attributed to the increase in disposable incomes. The buyers in this segment nowadays are not limited to businessmen like it was five years ago. Now you have people like doctors and senior executives in multinational firms who are keen on owning a high end bike.”
Though this statement from his is way too sceptical and generic, it certainly leaves a mark that Yamaha has no phased out plans of bringing in more higher displacement bikes into the Indian market. The market is also booming up and Yamaha, being known for its high end bikes would certainly see a steep rise in sales in the days to come.
Thanks to Economic Times
Regards,
Naren.
Team BikeAdvice.
