HMSI's Expansion At Narsapura To Address Global Demands

Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Pvt Ltd (HMSI) sold its very first two-wheeler in India in June, 2001, in the city of Bangalore, Karnataka. The two-wheeler sold was the Activa automatic scooter, which has now the mainstay for HMSI, currently holding the position of the top-selling two-wheeler in India. The company began its journey in India with its first factory in Gurgaon, with a single production line, which has now grown to four manufacturing facilities with 11 production lines across four states. The company currently has a total of over 31 mn customers across the country, and is seeing growing demand for its products, especially its flagship model, the Activa.

- Naveen Arul

In line with this increasing demand for its products, especially scooters, HMSI recently expanded its third facility at Narsapura, near Bangalore, by opening a fourth production line. This additional line has expanded the plant’s annual production capacity by 600,000 units, to its new total capacity of 2.4 mn units, making the Narsapura plant the world’s largest two-wheeler production facility for Honda globally. This expansion has also made India the top production base for Honda worldwide, with HMSI’s cumulative annual production capacity from all four plants now standing at 6.4 mn units.

NARSAPURA PLANT

The Narsapura facility is HMSI’s third plant, which began production in May, 2013, with a capacity of 1.8 mn units per year. The company has directly invested about Rs 2,600 crore in the facility, and provides employment to 7,000 associates. HMSI’s 26 suppliers, who have ancillary units set up locally, have made additional investments of about Rs 2,800 crore and created 15,000 additional employment opportunities, in order to support the Narsapura plant.