Yamaha On Top Gear

Shifting into overdrive this year, Yamaha India has now set itself on a path to be among the top of the leaderboards in the Indian motorcycle and scooter market. Featuring a large range of two-wheelers and accessories, Yamaha was spot on with its strategies ever since its inception in India. Now, with the launch of the powerful of R3 and an upcoming MT-03, Yamaha will definitely have to look for ways to cater to the rising demand. There wouldn't be a better answer to expect from Yamaha, as the Japanese giant has opened and already entered assembling operations in its new production plant down south, on the outskirts of Chennai. This will be the third of the lot in Yamaha's assets and would play a vital role in achieving increased sales over the coming years.





Unlike other manufacturing plants, Yamaha's Chennai plant has a special area allotted for external vendors who have partnership ties with the company. The 'Vendor Park', as termed by the company will see up to nine vendors investing to an amount up to an estimated Rs 1000 crore. The main idea here is to get rid of the cost of distribution of parts from suppliers and the production costs from it. Basically, Yamaha wants the whole production and assembly to occur under a large umbrella, thereby reducing unnecessary costs, which in turn would mean lowered rates for the products. Implementing a new eco-friendly way of operations, the plant makes use of available sunlight to provide lighting, recycle/treat the waste water that is discharged from the plant and conserving adequate resoruces. Spread over 177 acres, Yamaha will be looking to produce 4,50,000 units initially. Later, the estimated target of 2.5 million units would be achieved by the year 2018. Yamaha also plans to invest a total of Rs 1500 crore in several phases over the coming years, but will also look to improve the number of employees from the current 2000 workers to a good 3900.



Yamaha's Chennai plant will be the manufacturing home for the Saluto 125cc and the scooter models from Yamaha, for now. The company is betting big on the scooter segment, and claims that the majority of sales is gained by the scooters. With the launch of production from the Chennai plant, Yamaha will be hoping to gain sales of up to 50% in the coming years.