Even a couple of years back, Honda Cars India had a hard time sustaining in the Indian car market. India being a diesel car loving market posed to be a tough ground for the Japanese luxury car maker, as it was still an all Petrol car maker back then. Desperate to have a secure position in India, Honda launched its first ever diesel car in the country in the form of the Amaze compact sedan. This changed everything for the company; the mini sedan came out to be a rescuer for the company and helped it to revive to a much better position in the Indian car market.

Honda, though still has a long way to go. The Japanese company plans to get a much better positioning in India, and even aspires for the top spot in the domestic car market. Buoyed by the Amaze’s amazing success, Honda has gone ahead launching the al new City also with its diesel counterpart and has plans to soon launch more new cars all with diesel variants.

Giving an insight to the company’s future planning and line of progress, Honda Cars India’s president and CEO, Hironori Kanayama revealed quite a few things to the media.

About the Japanese car maker’s new strategy in India, Kanayama revealed that Honda has grown a lot and its global sales in the last financial year have achieved the sales milestone of 4 million. In the new future, the car major has plans to sell 6 million vehicles by the fiscal of 2016-17. The company is also highly focusing on developing in the car markets like India and to hike sales rates. The company’s first strategy was to develop a powerful and efficient diesel engine, as this is already achieved the company’s second strategy was to have the maximum local contents. The company has been able to do that also. Currently, the Amaze compact sedan has localized content of 90 percent, while this is even higher for the new City, standing at 92 percent. Now, the third strategy of the company is to be achieved and that is to increase the company’s footprint in smaller cities and towns in India.

Kanayama said that the company does not have enough resources to cater to the demands of Tier-II and Tier-III towns and cities that have good demands of Honda vehicles. Honda plans to have 170 dealership outlets in 110 cities by this fiscal.

Honda is also contemplating to fill the gaps in its product range by launching a sub-Rs 20 lakhs SUV that will be launch within a couple of years.

While speaking on the company’s diesel product focus, Kanayama said when the company launched the Amaze, 80 percent of the cars in India were diesel powered, but now it has reduced to 70 percent.

While speaking on India’s European Union free trade agreement, Kanayama said that the SIAM is looking into the matter, but it is the Indian Government’s call. However, the company needs fair situation to compete.

Honda seems to be growing faster in United States than in its native country Japan. In a recent report about the firm’s sales performance Honda has stated that its American production unit has become an export outlet for the first time in 2013. The unit of American Honda has exported 108,705 units of Honda and Acura vehicles, while it imported only 88737 units during financial year of 2013. Honda has four production units in United States spread across Ohio, Alabama and Indiana all of which together with manufacturing facilities in Canada and Mexico made it possible to achieve this feat. This Japanese firm began its automobile manufacturing activities in United States during 1982 and presently total capacities of its plants are above one million units.

Though Honda began its operations in United States to meet local demand it never expected the facilities to grow at such a rapid pace as to meet demand for exports also. The firm has invested above $ 3 million in last four years on its North American production facilities to expand capacity and manufacture both passenger cars and mini trucks for export across both North and South America and also Europe. This kind of financial and technology inputs has helped in increase of total product output in United States at 1,309,917 units in 2013 depicting an increase of 7.4 percent since 2012. The overall production from North America in 2013 was 1,781,213 units showing an increase of nearly 5.3 percent since 2012.

During announcement of these results Honda’s President and CEO for North America stated that the feat has been achieved due to sustained effort and foresight of its management to expand its North American production facilities into export units. They planned output in a way as to meet growing demand for products across northern hemisphere by development of popular products and timing their launch to beat the economic depression. He also attributed this success to efforts of its employees and associates who have reaffirmed their faith in the brand by helping expand it across new territories. Honda’s engineers have also been extremely smart in understanding needs of local markets and international markets and developing products which are suited to specific tastes of each region and maintaining quality across all its range of products.

Unlike European markets and Asian markets which have been going through worst part of economic slowdown, North and South American markets are slowly regaining and demand is growing since early part of 2013. However Honda was the only automaker to sell more than 300,000 units of its three models Accord, Civic and CR-V within United States itself. Though earlier Honda used to import all its products for United States from Japan’s manufacturing units, it now meets this demand and also exports from its North American facilities. During 2013, its Ohio facilities manufactured a total of nearly 1227181 units comprising both passenger cars and light trucks while Alabama unit produced 333,556 units of which nearly 20,466 units were exported to nearly 49 countries. Honda’s production units in Canada and Mexico together produced 471,296 units which manufacture subcompact cars and light trucks.

Mr. Hironori Kanayama is the CEO and President of Honda Cars India and is associated with the company since three decades. He has worked with Honda Motors in several markets in Taiwan, China and Japan. With the ample experience in the automobile industry, Mr. Kanayama is successful in understanding markets and taking the company to a higher position. He was in China for numbers of years and worked in Guangqi Honda Automobile Co. Ltd handling the post of President; later he became General Manager China Operation of Honda from October 2007 and then the President of Honda in China from September 2003. Since 1976, he has been working with Honda Motors, Japan.

On foundation day, annual event, in which all the families meet informally, is held every year. In the last event, Mr. Kanayama performed on the stage in front of their associates. It was very energetic for the executives to see the CEO performing and pictures of the event were uploaded on Facebook.

In 2013, the company marketed several automobiles, but Jazz/Fit has proved to be the best hatchback in the segment. Also, the company offers different range of vehicles in the Indian auto market, which includes SUV’s, MPV, sedans and hatchbacks. The company has planned to launch 4-5 new vehicles in the New Year for the customers. These vehicles might help Honda to increase the turnover and raise the sales volume. The specialty of all the new vehicles is that they will be available in diesel engine offering more convenient to the customers. However, these will make the market more competitive.

Kanayama is a great personality with simple lifestyle; he stays in accommodation provided by the company and enjoys Indian food, unlike other bosses who requires staying in hotels and makes company spend too much on themselves.

Kanayama had come across many challenges for Honda in the markets of India. The competition for the diesel engines was increasing and earlier Honda was not capable enough to produce diesel cars. He sets toughest challenges in front of the company which forces the employees to perform better implementing their productivity.

India is a big market with huge market opportunities and can help increasing sales and Honda has set a target of 6 million units by 2016. Mr. Kanayamas has said that, about 3 million unit sales are expected from Japan, North America and there are certain emerging markets like India from where they can collect their remaining sales.

Kanayama is very aggressive taking the sales of the company and implements new strategies for achieving the same. The products like Accord, Jazz, City, Mobilio, Vezel etc will be the game changer this year and company has loads of expectations from these products this year. But how much impression they’ll be able to hold on the customers will be understood once the vehicles are launched.

Honda has gained huge success till date and its new launches will definitely impress the customers in coming days.