India is emerging as a top market for leading Japanese two-wheeler companies. Last year, India became Honda’s biggest global market for two-wheelers. Now, another Japanese major, Yamaha, is set to see India emerge as its second biggest market, for the first time.
India is about to overtake Vietnam for Yamaha, next only to Indonesia. Yamaha believes it will sell a million two-wheelers in India during the 2017 calendar year, compared to the 0.92 mn it expects to sell in Vietnam.
India emerged as Yamaha’s third biggest market in 2014, overtaking China. The Japanese company globally sold 5.15 million two-wheelers in the 2016 calendar year and aims to sell 5.82 million in 2017. It expects 30 per cent of this growth to come from the Indian market.
“With the current product portfolio and aggressive marketing strategy to enhance our reach in the tier-I, II and III markets, as well as rural areas, we will reach our target of one million domestic sales in 2017. It will be a big achievement for Yamaha; we always believed in the potential of the Indian market,” says Hiroaki Fujita, chairman at Yamaha Motor India.
India is the biggest two-wheeler market in the world and Yamaha has expanded its market share here from 2.7 per cent in calendar year 2012 to 4.7 per cent in 2016. It will also become the fifth company to sell a million two-wheelers in India (after Hero, Honda, Bajaj and TVS), and the second Japanese brand to achieve this feat, after Honda.
Yamaha sold 786,000 two-wheelers in the Indian market last calendar year, up 32 per cent from 2015. It also shipped out 162,000 vehicles.
For Honda and Yamaha, the traditional large markets of this region are no longer driving growth. “Many of the top two-wheeler markets in Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, have already matured. The India market has shown constant growth in recent years and there is huge scope for us to grow,” said Fujita. Yamaha has invested Rs 1,280 crore in manufacturing and research & development facilities in India. The cumulative investment by 2018, it would expand annual capacity to 1.5 million units (from the current 1.2 million), will be about Rs 1,500 crore.
The company says it plans to aggressively expand its sales and service network, from the existing 2,900 customer touch points to 4,000 by year-end. Its growth has been helped by a surge in scooter volumes, up 37 per cent in the 11 months ending February 2017 to 395,704 units. The company sells more scooters than motorcycles in India. Motorcycle volumes grew about four per cent to 317,257 units in the same period.