Hero Dismisses Honda's claims to be No.1 by 2016

Hero-Honda, once the no.1 two-wheeler brand in the world, now after separation are the no. 1 and no.2 brands of the Indian two-wheeler market. Honda has come a long way after the split and become the No.2 brand in India, leaving Bajaj Auto behind. And now the Japanese brand is eyeing the numero uno position in the Indian market. In fact Honda's global operating officer for motorcycle business, Shinji Aoyama made a statement that Honda will become the leader in the Indian market by 2015-16, but their erstwhile partner thinks other wise. Recently Pawan Munjal dismissed the statement by saying, "I am dead sure of sustaining our leadership. Nobody can take away our leadership. It is no joke."

Honda claims looks sensible as Hero MotoCorp has seen volumes go down at a time when HMSI gained in numbers and market share. Hero MotoCorp's sales fell 2% last fiscal at 59.12 lakh units, while HMSI gained 31% in the same year at 26 lakh units. And in the first quarter of this fiscal, sales of Hero Moto fell by 4% to 15.27 lakh units, while HMSI saw volumes move up 14% to 7.1 lakh units. But one thing is quite evident that Hero is still selling more than twice Honda sells, and Honda still needs to work a lot on bikes as the major chunk of its sales come from the scooters. Honda's growth has been tremendous, and it has swiftly edged past TVS and Bajaj to become the country's second-biggest two-wheeler maker and the No.1 scooter manufacturer, but passing Hero will be a difficult task. However, the manufacturer strongly believes that market leadership is not far if the industry sales continue to move in slow zone. "Under the current scenario in India, I believe it will not be 2020, but even 2016 or 2015 by when we will attain number one position here," Aoyama had said in March.

It is true that the sales of the Hero has decreased in 2013, but here the slow market is the main reason instead of the Honda. And post split, Hero is working aggressively on its R&D and has made tie-ups with Erick Bull Racing, Engines Engineering and AVL, which add new strength to Hero's R&D. Commenting on this Munjal Said, “There are several projects spanning across existing and new platforms that are currently underway at our R&D centres both at Gurgaon and Dharuhera in Haryana. We have more than 400 engineers at our R&D division, out of which an overwhelming majority are young and highly-skilled personnel. They are all brimming with ideas and I have given them a carte-blanche to think out-ofthe-box and be innovative. We are also adding more engineers ." The company is also setting up an integrated R&D centre at Kukas in Rajasthan, which is expected to commence the operations "very soon" , he added.