Honda, the biggest automatic scooter maker in India, is shifting gears by entering the 350cc segment and recalibrating its motorcycle strategy. Can it find its thump?
Atsushi Ogata, President, CEO And Managing Director For Honda Motorcycle And Scooter India at Honda Big Wing in Gurugram, India
Image: Amit Verma
The ideation, and preparation for the 350 cc thump, started in 2017. Throughout the year, R&D engineers from the Tokyo headquarters of Honda Motor Co made multiple visits to a few cities in north and south India to get consumer feedback, and prepare a comprehensive blueprint. For Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI), a 100 percent arm of the Japanese motorcycle maker, the idea was simple: To rev up its play in India. “In the 350 cc segment, the bikers are expressive and the bike personifies a rider,” says Yadvinder Singh Guleria ‘San’, director (sales and marketing), HMSI. “We were exploring what was missing, and what could be added.” For Guleria, who has had ‘San’, a Japanese title of respect, suffixed to his surname since March 2000 when he joined HMSI, the task was not easy.
There was the baggage from Honda’s joint venture (JV) with Hero, which started in 1984 and ended in 2010. The break-up of the partnership gave Hero a massive lead in the 100 cc-110 cc commuter bike segment, which has the largest volume of sales.
Honda’s solo play in India was constricted till 2010 because of two factors: It was not allowed to roll out any model in the first three years since setting up HMSI in 1999, which is why it launched its first bike Unicorn 150 cc only in 2004; Honda also couldn’t enter the commuter segment under the terms of the JV with Hero, thus missing out on the volume game.
Playing catch-up in the commuter segment didn’t make any sense for HMSI, which dominated the executive segment (125cc) with CB Shine, and so it zeroed in on a segment with headroom for massive growth: 350 cc.
In FY17, Royal Enfield had sold over 6.66 lakh motorcycles in the 250 cc to 750 cc range, with the Classic 350 reportedly making up over 75 percent of sales. This gave it a 95 percent share of the mid-weight segment. Not only had the Indian bike maker created the segment, it barely had any competition, with customers upgrading their vehicles to more premium models.