After lying low for over the past few years, Yamaha Motor India is gearing up to take on competition in a big way. The company is targeting 10% marketshare by 2010-11 as against current 4% through a slew of initiatives.
In an interview with FE here on Monday, Sanjay Tripathi, division head (product planning & strategy), Yamaha said, ?We are looking at a 10% marketshare by 2010-11 as against 4% now by selling 8,00,000 units a year by 2010-11 and we hope to break-even during the same time.? During the year 2007 the company sold 1,20,000 vehicles.
?With a slew of new launches in 2008 and a strong brand positioning exercise, our market share has gone up to 4% and we hope to scale it up to 10% with more products, increased sales, enhanced dealership network and better brand positioning,? he said. ?The company will be soon entering into accessories, fashion apparels for men,? Tripathi added.
Yamaha brand is globally known for sportive look, young and high performance. ?It has not worked in India that led to our market share crashing from a peak of 27% in 1993 to a low of 2-3%. Now, we have involved in positioning our brand on the lines of global pattern and accordingly we have introduced new bikes. The response has been encouraging,? he said.
Though the 100cc segment currently holds sizeable chunk of the total market share, its share has come down from a high of 75% to 60% and may go down further. The premium-cum-high end segment has started attracting youths and its market share is going up by the day. ?Our focus will be to target the age group of 18 to 30, who will be the driving force behind the two-wheeler market in India,? he pointed out.
The company has received an overwhelming response to its CBU models such as R1 and MT01, which are priced at Rs 10.50 lakh a unit. ?Since we launched these models in December 2007, we have sold over 100 such units, which is far beyond our expectations. Similarly, we received 15,000 cash bookings for our recently launched FZ16 model even before actual delivery started.