Yamaha Motor Research & Development India Private Limited (YMRI) has set up its second Yamaha Research & Development (R&D) center in India, at the Kancheepuram district in Tamil Nadu. The district borders the State Capital Chennai and also shares some of its territories with the Metro. The Yamaha Motor Group has the YMRI set up in four other international markets as Italy, China, Thailand and Taiwan, besides India, as the fifth.
The Research & Development center has been set up to plan ideal resource utilization and to improve capacity and overall capability. The India Yamaha Motor (IYM) Limited has set up the second R&D facility at Rs. 66 crore, which is part of the Yamaha’s Rs. 1500 crore investment pledged to the “Make in India” program by 2018.

 “The objective of the new centre is to develop models for India and eventually, the global market. The Chennai centre shall be the second main pillar for YMRI. By collaboration with the current development power in Surajpur centre, we aim to strengthen more of the cost reduction and attractive product development in the Chennai centre. The key role of this India Integrated Development Center is to develop optimized specifications for the Indian market,” said Yasuo Ishihara, managing director, YMRI.

 IYM aims for a greater market share in the scooters segment, as the demand for the same is on the rise. The once iconic-motorcycle-seller now sells about 51% scooters in their total sales. In the month of May, the Japanese scooter and motorcycle manufacturer sold 53% scooters out of their 62,748 unit sales.

Yamaha has also witnessed a 45% growth in sales in the first half of 2016 over the same period last year. The IYM was originally formed in collaboration with Mitsui &Co. Limited, in the year 2008 and the floating of scooters began in the year 2012.