"Indian two-wheeler buyers are followers": Roy Kurian, Yamaha Motor India

Yamaha aims to sell one million units in India by 2015. Though this projected figure includes exports, it is still quite a claim. If the company meets this target, it will achieve a market share of 10 per cent in the country.

We spoke to Roy Kurian, VP, marketing and sales, Yamaha Motor India, about how he plans to meet this target. Part of the effort, we learn, involves addressing India's young, efforts towards which have already begun. The company has started visiting schools (300 of them) across the country and delivering talks on safe riding. Talk about catching them young! The programme is a social initiative to educate and influence both parents and children about road safety.

Before we get to the details of Kurian's plans, a quick look at Yamaha's journey so far.

Yamaha Motors made its India foray in 1985. Though it tasted initial success with the RX 100 variant, the company's ride in the country soon turned rough; it even called off its joint venture with Escorts Motors in 2001, following which Yamaha India became a 100 per cent subsidiary of Yamaha Motor Company, Japan (YMC). In 2008, Mitsui entered into an agreement with YMC to become a joint-investor in the company.

Formed in 2008 as a JV with Mitsui, Yamaha Motor India produced a range of motorcycles for domestic consumption as well as export, including the FZ16, FZ-S, Fazer, and R15. The new strategy was to focus on the performance biking portfolio (R15 and FZ series). It worked.

Yamaha Motor India registered 6 per cent growth in 2012 at 487,290 units versus 460,815 units in 2011, and the domestic sales of India Yamaha Motors increased by 1.4 per cent in 2012 with sales of 348,406 units as against 343,466 units during 2011. Between January and September 2013, the company sold 3.3 lakh two-wheelers in India, a remarkable turnaround.

Now, over to Kurian.

Edited Excerpts

Many Indian two-wheeler buyers are followers; they buy products which are either recommended by or bought by their friends, neighbours or colleagues. They don't experiment; they follow trends blindly. Hence it is very difficult to market or promote a product, however good it is, because most of them have already made up their minds. This is a major challenge at least for us in India currently and we are working on resolving this. That is why, in 2014, our marketing will be focused on reaching out to youngsters. Through them we will enter the minds of their families.

The Indian two-wheeler industry is growing at a fast pace. Simultaneously, accident rates have also increased. We, being a responsible manufacturer, feel it's our duty to spread awareness about road safety. We noticed that most parents violate traffic rules, across India, and decided to target the kid of the house because he/she happens to be the most influential member of the family as far as decisions are concerned. If the kid can influence the parent to obey traffic rules while riding, Indian streets will be a lot safer.

Secondly, today's kid is tomorrow's rider. And, the first brand that he would recall is Yamaha because of the connect made with the brand as a kid. That was another idea behind targeting kids through this campaign.

Our brand, in India, is gradually getting connected with people very well. That is because we adopted a top down approach in product development for this market. Our revolutionary products have been our performance bikes which include the 150 CC FZ Series and the R15. Besides, we have recently ventured into the scooter market with Ray and Ray Z and these products are getting tremendous response from the youngsters.

Also, because our customer base has multiplied, we have invested a lot in improving our service quality and spare parts availability.

Both, performance and commuter biking are growing in India. We still see a good number of people opting for 100 cc machines. Having said that, I'll add that as far as performance biking goes, people are graduating; earlier, the performance bike category in India stretched to 150 cc machines, but now we see many opting for 250 cc and 350 cc bikes too.

So this is actually a trend that shows what people are expecting from a bike manufacturer in India. Riding as a trend is growing and since this country has two kinds of riders - the performance rider and the commuter -- any two-wheeler manufacturer has to have both categories.

Not really. I think the concept of that bike was wrongly noted. The idea was never to make a 'cheapest bike'. We wanted to bring the manufacturing cost down so that the end consumer needs to pay less while buying a Yamaha product. And, that is not for one bike. Of course we will pilot with one model but if the model proves to be a success, we will implement the technology across all our products. That is why we have launched a separate company called Yamaha Motor R&D India (YMRI) where the experiments will be done.

We launched Ray for female personal mobility. It was very well accepted by girls. Meanwhile, we saw that a part of the male segment of riders was also interested in owning scooters. We felt our positioning as a 'women only' product might hamper our sales. Hence we decided to launch Ray Z for boys with a slight change in looks. But surprisingly, even girls like Ray Z. Hence we have decided not to position the Ray series in a gender specific manner; now, we are calling both products uni-sex bikes.