Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt. Ltd. (HMSI) is the 100% subsidiary of Honda Motor Company, Japan – the World’s No.1 two-wheeler company. Honda started Indian 2 Wheeler operations in May 2001. In the 14 years since then, Honda has grown to become the second largest two-wheeler company in India with over 20 million happy customers in India. Today, every 7 seconds a new customer joins the fast expanding Honda family in India.
Growth: Making a great beginning in the 2 months of current fiscal 2015-16, Honda is the highest market share and volume gainer in two-wheeler industry with 26% market share. At a time when industry sales are negative 1%, Honda has grown 3%. In motorcycles, CB Shine is leading the 125cc segment while new CB Unicorn 160 is now 2nd largest selling model in just months of launch. In automatic scooter segment, Honda’s market share has now reached 59%. Growing nearly 4 times that of industry, Honda is today leading the Scooterization of Indian two-wheeler industry.
Honda achieved highest-ever sales of 44.5 lac units in FY’14-15 and led with its stellar 20% growth which was more than double the 8% growth of domestic 2Wheeler industry (YoY basis).
Current production: Honda started production in 2001 from its first plant of 16 lac unit capacity at Manesar (Haryana). In 2011, Honda expanded to 2nd plant of 12 lac units at Tapukara (Rajasthan). This was followed by 3rd plant of 18 lac unit annual capacity at Narsapura (Karnataka) in 2013. All three plants are currently running on full capacity.
Future Production expansion: Honda is strengthening its ‘Make in India’ resolve through steady and strategic investments with a long term objective of creating 39% additional capacity within 3.5 years.
Foreseeing future increase in customer demand for automatic scooters, Honda is constructing its new 4th plant in India at Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Once operational in early 2016, Honda’s 4th plant will be the World’s largest scooter only plant of 12 lac units annual capacity. Additionally, Honda 2Wheeler will invest to build a new production line at its existing 3rd plant Karnataka before the end of 2016.
Overall, this will take Honda’s cumulative production capacity to 6.4 million units - 1.6 million units (1st plant), 1.2 million units (2nd plant), 2.4 million units (3rd plant with upcoming new line) and projected 1.2 million units (upcoming 4th plant).
Network: Moving full throttle, Honda has aggressively doubled its network in 2 years from 1950 outlets (FY’2012-13) to 3750 outlets (FY’2014-15) and plans to add 800 new touch-points in current fiscal.
Parallely, Honda has penetrated its direct office presence from its 5 regional offices to 11 zonal offices for amassing local market intelligence, strategizing, and implementing regional approach faster. The 11 zonal offices are located at key cities – Chennai, Raipur, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Patna, Jaipur, Nagpur, Mohali, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar & Varanasi.
Fun Expansion: Honda is proud to be the industry first to promote fun, safety and environment in India. For 7 years, Honda has initiated and expanded on popular fun initiatives like Honda One Make Race, Gymkhana, Dream Asia Cup of Road Racing and the unique Honda Racing Training Academy in liaison with professional racing team. Additionally, Honda has introduced five global performance fun bikes in India. These include – CB 1000R, CBR 1000RR Fireblade, VT 1300CX and Goldwing 1800L.
Safety Promotion: Honda has educated over 5 lac individuals of all age groups on safety riding activity with special focus on empowering females and kids. Additionally HMSI has adopted eight Traffic Training parks in Chandigarh, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Yeole, Hyderabad and two in Delhi where it has trained over 2 lac people on safe riding.
Awards: Honda 2Wheelers has won more than 100 prestigious awards. In FY 2014-15, Honda received 19 awards including Best CEO Multinational (Forbes India), Most Trusted Brand in Indian two-wheelers (Economic Times Brand Equity Survey 2014), Most Trusted Brand (Readers Digest), Two Wheeler Manufacturer of the year (Bike India Awards 2015) and Brand Excellence Award in Automobile Sector (ABP). Honda technology won - Convenience Technology of the Year and Engine of the Year (Auto Tech Review IATIA Awards). Honda also won accolades for its road safety initiatives like CSR initiative towards road safety-2W (Bloomberg Autocar 2015), CSR Leadership Award (Think Odisha Leadership Awards 2014). On the product front, Honda’s Activa 125 won 6 “Scooter of the year" awards while CB Shine and CB Unicorn won the prestigious JD Power awards.
