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Hero Honda drives into scooter market

Thursday, October,06, 2005

Hero Honda on wednesday entered the scooter market with the launch of all new pleasure, a 102cc vehicle that will hit the road by mid November this year.Further,it also launched a 150 cc motorcycle, Achiever, to augment its premium range.

Hero Honda's foray into scooters has been a subject of much speculation ever since Honda set up wholly owned subsidiary.Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, to first start making scooters and then motorcycles.

The price of pleasure is yet to be announced. Its engine has been developed by Honda's R&D team. Pleasure is projected to sell about 100,000 units in the first 12 months.

Along with the launch of the Pleasure, Hero Honda also Launched its new premium segment motorcycle, the 150cc Achiever, priced between Rs 47,900 and Rs52,7000. Achiever, according to company executives, completes the premium portfolio which now has CBZ and Karizma.

Company Officials said though the design and performance of the new scooter has been calibrated to suit both genders, the focus market would be mostly women drivers. the new product will also be pitched as the second two-wheeler in the family,giving the company an opppurtunity to tap the 13 million existing customers owning two wheelers.

The new scooter will be rolled out of the company plant in Gurgaon.

Pre-empting speculation on the possible location of the company's third plant(second plant at Dharuhera),Pawan Munjal, Managing Director, Hero Honda said that an announcement "with all the details" which fails on November 1.

Munjal said the new product, though targets the re-emerging scooter market, thanks to the sucess of the Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India, the overall market share of scooters in the two wheeler market would remain unchanged in the coming years.

He said, at best, the share of scooters in the two-wheeler market may improve to 20 percent from the present 15 percent.

Disscussing the company's overall targets for the yeat, Hero Honda executives said total volumes this year is likely to breach three million, thus clocking a growth of around 18 per cent over the previous year.

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