New Delhi, February 18, 2013: In a bid to drive new sales growth, India Yamaha Motor Ltd (IYML) has announced the establishment of a separate sales and marketing unit, Yamaha Motor India Sales (YMIS). This division will be responsible for aggressively pushing sales and marketing initiatives. YMIS will be led by Masaki Asano, IYML’s managing director (pictured), who will also be the MD for YMIS. He will be assisted by Jun Nakata as director with Roy Kurian as sales and marketing group head, Ravinder Singh as strategy planning group head and Takehiko Yamazaki as parts operation group head.

Speaking on the development, Masaki Asano said, “India is a key market with immense potential. The new emerging India consists of a customer base that has varied product taste. While a large customer base offers an excellent opportunity to propel the growth trajectory, it also comes with the challenge of offering the exact product to fulfill the customer’s wish list. Most importantly, it is imperative to connect the product with the customer. The restructuring will help us to intensify our marketing effort.”

IYML sold a total of 29,787 units in January 2013 comprising 22,150 motorcycles and 7,637 scooters, an overall growth of 13.26 percent over sales in January 2012. In the 10-month period of April 2012-January 2013, the company has sold a total of 294,964 units (253,218 motorcycles + 41,746 scooters), down 1.23 percent over sales a year ago. At present it has 11 products in the domestic market, comprising 10 bikes and one scooter. Its import portfolio includes the VMAX, YZF-R1 and FZ1.