Shigeto Nishikawa
Japanese super bike maker Kawasaki plans to strengthen its offerings further over the next one year by launching half-a-dozen models. For the Indian arm, 2015 was fruitful year as it launched few high powered super bikes including the H2. Deputy Managing
How do you see the brand establishment of Kawasaki in India? What is your strategy to penetrate more in the market? Nishikawa: The brand establishment is pretty good in the market. Strategywise I would like to mesh on the ongoing one. A month over since its launch, time to delve on the acceptability of the same from the customer’s end. With the customer quality being secured, we would like to have deeper insights on how fast H2 reaches the market. On par with the quality we would like to give weightage to customer satisfaction too. With the existing customer database, we are able to dash with lot of new customers as referrals. I realise that I have to cover very wide area to attract many customers keeping our motives one down in the league with customer satisfaction leading us the rally.
Will you be looking to assemble Kawasaki H2 in India? Nishikawa: Assembling as of now is a million dollar question. Quality control parts and engine assembly are done in Japan manufacturing unit. Lot of technical training is needed for getting the assembly knowledge localised.
What is your current capacity and do you have plans to increase your capacity? Nishikawa: The current capacity of Pune plant is 5000 and as I highlighted in the immediate past question the expected roll out is 2000 in an years time. So we do not have any plans to increase our capacity as we are already left with more capacity. Hence we are planning to increase the production lines to have maximum utilisation of the capacity.
Do you have any cost savings in future which will be passed on to the customers? Nishikawa: Local assembling leads to cost reduction and if produced locally this will still perk our benefits. Indian parts are already applied to our manufacturing. As of now the chronology before it reaches the target country would be Thailand and Japan. From Thailand, the parts hit the Japan’s manufacturing unit and getting consolidated over there and reaches the target country as a CKD. But when we target Indian suppliers the landed cost will be reduced and this cost could be transferred to MRP. With Ninja H2 model it would take time to realise this.