Revving up strategies for the global low cost bike, Yamaha launches project INDRA (Innovative and New Development based on Responsible Analysis). The Yamaha Low Cost Bike is estimated to be around 30,000 INR (approximately 500 USD) and will be developed for the markets of India and Africa mainly.
The company plans to collaborate Japanese and Indian marketing and R&D teams to work towards the making of this motorbike. The recently commissioned plant in Chennai comes into play here. Yamaha has set up the 180 acre facility which will host manufacturing facilities for all the parts of the low cost bike. Here the bike will find a home and reduce production cost for Yamaha ten fold.
As told to Hindu Business Line, Sanjeev Paul, Group Head Purchase Operation says that they, “will not compromise on Yamaha’s core values even while working hard on cost reduction.” The idea here is to form a team that works in tandem with the research that they are doing. The suppliers themselves will be involved in the designing and hence the product will be of high efficiency and low cost. Yamaha has roped in Japanese suppliers who shall work from the Chennai plant. These as of now include, Kayaba (KYB) for suspension, Sakura for job systems and several other suppliers wholly dedicated to their own area of production.
The Yamaha low cost bike should become a reality roughly around 2016-17. Although the exact dates of launch and specifications have not been revealed, one can predict the bike to similar to its current counterparts. Regardless, all budget bikes like the TVS Star Sport, Bajaj Platina and Hero’s HF Dawn make enormous sales of 1 lakh units minimum per month in the Indian market alone.
Yamaha hopes to make their two-wheeler markets like Africa, Brazil and Indonesia much more profitable with the introduction of this bike. More than half of the production will be exported to Africa from India to generate more revenue there.
The project head, Sanjeev Paul clearly points out that their main objective is not to make a product that is cheap but one that has all the Yamaha trademarks of fuel efficiency, affordable and stylish. We have seen previously in the case of the Tata Nano how the low cost of a product actually works badly for sales. We hope that for Yamaha the same does not happen as they begin working in the Chennai Plant soon.
Source: The Hindu Business Line
