After coming out of the joint venture with KEL, HMCL planned to introduce its own two-wheelers in the market. In October 1999, in a major strategic initiative, HMCL established HMSI. The company made an initial investment of Rs 3 bn to establish a plant with an annual production capacity of 200,000 units...
Activa
Launched in 2001, Honda Activa was the first scooter model of HMSI for the Indian market. A 102 cc scooter, Activa was specially designed keeping in view the needs and preferences of Indian consumers who expressed that the conventional Indian scooter was too big and difficult to handle and that the scooterette was too small and similar to a moped...
Dio
Dio was launched in 2002 as the first motoscooter in the Indian market...
The Marketing Strategy
Thanks to the success of its joint venture with Hero Group and KEL, 'Honda' was already a household name in India. Hence, rather than putting major efforts into brand building, HMSI's marketing strategy emphasized on offering innovative products at competitive prices, novel promotional campaigns and developing an extensive distribution network...
Looking Ahead
After the launch of Unicorn, HMSI announced plans to introduce a 135cc motorcycle in 2005. Confirming this, Yukihiro Aoshima, COO and MD, HMSI said, "The Unicorn is just the beginning.....We do not want to restrict ourselves to any specific category.
We would like to have full line-up covering right from the entry level low-cost motorcycle to a motorcycle for people with strong taste and fun elements into it." With plans to launch its own motorcycles in India, analysts feared that HMCL may not renew its ties with the Hero