Yamaha to focus on looks with economy

Jaidev Majumdar

Kolkata, Sept 12: Yamaha Motor India Pvt Ltd wants its style-cum-economy range of four-stroke motorcycles to account for 60 per cent of its total sales in another two years.

The fully-owned subsidiary of Yamaha Motor Corp of Japan aims to sell a total of 5,50,000 motorcycles by end 2002-03, against expected sales of 3,00,000 in the current fiscal.

Yamaha, a late entrant in the style-cum-economy sector with the launch of the 100cc Crux R on August 18, has identified this fast-growing segment as its core area.

Yamaha officials said it has a nine per cent market-share in India and sold about 1,94,000 motorcycles in 2000-01. They said sales of four-stroke style-cum-economy motorcycles are growing at 40 per cent a year against overall motorcycle sales growth of 15 per cent.

Yamaha’s Crux R is pitted against competitors like Kawasaki-Bajaj’s Caliber and Hero-Honda’s Passion. But the Crux R has already recorded sales of 6,000 units nationally, barely 12 days after it was launched on August 18. The company expects to sell 9,000 units of Crux R in September.

“For a long time we were not present in this segment but now we hope to rapidly consolidate by making new offerings,” the Yamaha officials said. “While our competitors keep on adding new features to their models in this segment, we are in favour of launching entirely new models. We’ll roll out one such model by April next year,” they added.

Yamaha India expects to export 30,000 bikes this fiscal. It leads on this front, with exports of 22,000 motorcycles during the last fiscal, mostly to South-east Asia and Latin America. In a bid to convert India into an export hub, Yamaha has recently revved up its two motorcycle manufacturing plants, at Faridabad in Haryana and Surajpur in Uttar Pradesh. The two plants are now making a total of 24,000 motorcycles a month.

For now, the company is pinning its hopes entirely on the success of Crux R. The company has an adspend of Rs 9 crore till November 2001 for fuelling its latest launch.

“For both Crux and Crux R models, we are now offering customers eight free services spread over two years or 30,000 kms - whichever happens first. It is for the first time anybody in the two-wheeler industry has come out with such an offer,” the Yamaha officials said.
The Yamaha officials are also upbeat about Crux R doing well in the rural areas. But this will be mostly at the expense of its own old favourite, Rajdoot, whose popularity is waning.

“Crux is gaining acceptance in the rural areas because of its trendy looks. We are expecting a four per cent decline in Rajdoot’s sales during the current fiscal. We have to make this up by increasing the sale of Crux,” they said.