Hero Cycles sets up international HQ in London

In a major push towards expanding its overseas business and strengthening its global presence, Hero Motors Company (HMC) is setting up its international headquarters christened ‘Hero International (HIT)’ in London. The new entity is aimed at bringing HMC’s European businesses under one umbrella and giving its electric bike business a major boost globally.

The establishing of Hero International is a part of chairman, Pankaj M Munjal’s long-term vision to grab an increasing share in the lucrative European electric bike market that is growing at an exponential pace. The move will unify the HMC-owned European businesses including HNF in Germany and Insync Bikes in UK by bringing them under one umbrella. The company aims to take up its European revenue up to 300 million euros (Rs 2,480 crore) by 2021.

Hero International is expected to play a strategic role in streamlining and bringing together different strategic strengths of the group including its European research, development and design centres, backed up with a scaling up of the company’s manufacturing capability in India. HMC’s Global R&D is currently centralised in Berlin with HNF which is a premium engineering unit. Together, the entities are expected to give Hero Motors Company a significant presence in Europe and are central to the its major overseas push. HIT will provide unified and strategic leadership to the company in Europe with its finance, strategy and supply chain operations to be centred here.

Pankaj M Munjal said: “With Hero International (HIT), the HMC Group now has an international headquarters in London to act as a catapulting agent to our global expansion plans. E-bike sales are expected to reach an estimated 30 million in Europe by 2030 growing at a CAGR of 26% between 2024 and 2030. With Europe as our key market, HMC has set its sights on capturing a greater pie of this fast-growing e-bike segment with a goal of touching a revenue of Euro 300 million (Rs 2,480 crore) by 2025. The dedicated headquarters in Europe will enable us devise an effective long term growth strategy backed up by manufacturing support from India where we are scaling up production capacity significantly through the International Cycle Valley project.”

The ambitious international plans have robust backend support with the upcoming E-Cycles Valley project in Punjab that will add a capacity of 4 million bikes and e-bikes across India and Sri Lanka, from where the group avails zero duty exports to Europe. Notably, the Cycle Valley is expected to take Hero Group’s manufacturing capacity to 10 million bikes every year.