Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd. has now established Yamaha Motor Research and Development India Pvt. Ltd. (YMRI) in Surajpur, State of Uttar Pradesh. Few say that it is to become the motorcycle R&D headquarters in India. This initiative is intended to increase Yamaha’s manufacturing competitiveness in the country. The function of the India Procurement Centre established last year has been transferred and incorporated into the new company, and will now operate as the India Integrated Development Centre.
YMRI was established in February this year to function as the core of the second Integrated Development Centre, following the establishment of the ASEAN Integrated Development Centre in Thailand last year. The YMRI will be the fifth overseas R&D headquarters for Yamaha Motor Group following Italy, Taiwan, China, and Thailand. The new Integrated Development Centre aims to contribute to India's operations by "change drawings", tailoring reforms to design, maintenance, and production standards, optimizing them to fit the Indian market and provide low-cost models to customers.
Speaking on the occasion Mr. Hiroyuki Suzuki, CEO & Managing Director, India Yamaha Motor Pvt. Ltd. said, “We at Yamaha strongly believe in constant innovation. The R&D centre will help us to put channelized effort in conceptualization of new models and parts keeping in mind the changing customer preferences. This will help us not only to develop models and parts for India market but also to develop models and parts for export markets as well”.
Explaining the development further, Mr. Toshikazu Kobayashi, Managing Director, Yamaha Motor Research and Development India Pvt. Ltd. said, “We plan to achieve lowest cost models and parts in the world through INDRA (Innovative and New Development based on Responsible Analysis) activity meant to provide optimized specification thorough investigation in product life cycle. This activity will significantly help us in reducing the cost yet rolling out products that meet all customer aspirations and market standards.” Future plans include the setup of the new Chennai site to develop models intended for the Indian market and Global market, based on model platforms developed in Japan.
The motorcycle market in India has been growing constantly in recent years owing to political and economic stability and financial growth - the market scale reached around 14 million units in 2012 overtaking China to become the world's largest motorcycle market. The market is expected to grow further, reaching 16 million units in 2015. In this environment, Yamaha has been aggressively launching models in the premium and deluxe bikes segment and breaking into the rapidly growing scooter category, achieving domestic sales of 350,000 units in 2012. Based on the new medium-term plan commencing this year, Yamaha will continue to launch products in the scooters category while expanding the sales network, and constructing and launching the second factory in Chennai by 2014. Sales of 500,000 units in 2013, and 1 million units in 2015 are expected.
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