Honda Motor, Japan has deployed a team of engineers in India to develop a global middleweight motorcycle. Honda sees a potential growth & business in the middleweight motorcycles falls between 250cc to 750cc after observing a successful growth rate achieved by Eicher Motors’s Royal Enfield in India. Particularly for the last 5 years and still, Royal Enfield’s sales rate graph is towards a phenomenal upward growth. Honda considers Royal Enfield as its rival on middleweight motorcycles in India. To start with, hoping Honda would plan to develop a 500cc engine in India.

Previously, Rajiv Bajaj, MD, Bajaj Auto has given an indirect statement in his media interviews that Bajaj Dominar 400 was launched to compete in the middleweight motorcycle segment, especially with Royal Enfield motorcycles. Now Honda is also getting into the game on middleweight segment motorcycles in India.

Speaking on this Noriaki Abe, president and chief executive officer (CEO) at Asian Honda Motor Co. Ltd said, “We have already allocated the people, some from Thailand and some from Japan to India to make a new concept mid-sized motorcycle in India. If we can make that product, we can export that to even Japan. We have always had a market between 250cc and 400cc in Japan but the motorcycle market in Japan is shrinking. There, it is very difficult for us to have a very competitive model in such a displacement…cost-wise.“But they (Royal Enfield) have a huge scale in the Indian market and dominate that segment alone. So, it is a very interesting business model. If we decide, we have technology to compete with them (Eicher). Our priority was not there. But, we notice that they have very, very interesting growth. So we are preparing for that.”

Source: Hindustan Times