Yamaha beefs up R&D in India, sets up second unit in Tamil Nadu

Yamaha Motor Research & Development India (YMRI) has announced the setting up of its second R&D Centre in India today.

The new facility is located in the premises of India Yamaha Motor’s plant in Kanchipuram district, Tamil Nadu. The new centre has been established to ensure optimum utilisation of resources at both the locations and focus towards the enhancement of the capability and the capacity. An investment of Rs 66 crore has gone into setting up the unit and is part of the Rs 1,500 crore investment that Yamaha has already committed to ‘Make in India’ by 2018.

The company’s long-term plan is to develop products which fit the Indian and global customer requirements but also sport the Yamaha brand’s DNA of ‘Performance, Innovation, Design, Style and Sportiness’. The centre is intended to increase Yamaha’s manufacturing competitiveness in India.

Yamaha says YMRI, which is billed as a ‘Value Development Company’, aims to develop not only higher specification but also low cost products for the India market. For this purpose, India R&D plans to ‘develop’, ‘purchase’ and do ‘cost innovation’. The new R&D Centre has state-of-the-art facilities including prototype testing and validation and a test track with simulation of Indian road conditions.

Commenting on the new R&D centre, Yasuo Ishihara, managing director, YMRI, said, “The objective of the new Centre is to develop models for India and eventually, the global market. The Chennai Centre shall be the second main pillar for YMRI. By collaboration with the current development power in Surajpur centre, we aim to strengthen more of the cost reduction and attractive product development in the Chennai centre. The key role of this India Integrated Development Centre is to develop optimised specifications for the Indian market.”

YMRI was set up in February 2013 to function as the core of the second Integrated Development Center, following the establishment of the ASEAN Integrated Development Center in Thailand in 2012. The YMRI is the fifth overseas R&D headquarters for Yamaha Motor Group following Italy, Taiwan, China and Thailand. With the aim of high local development, the company wants to accelerate its engineering and manufacturing at local market quality standards, to support the product competitiveness both within the Indian market and for exports.

Booming two-wheeler market in India

The two-wheeler market in India has been growing constantly over the past decade and sales reached 16 million units in 2015 and is expected to continue to grow at a decent pace going forward, led by the scooter segment. India Yamaha Motor has seen rapid growth in sales numbers with 2016 first-half sales growth at 45% over the previous year. During 2015 and 2016, the company has launched a number of products including the 125cc Saluto, 110cc Saluto RX, 321cc sporty YZF-R3 motorcycles and the 113cc Fascino and Cygnus Ray-ZR scooters.