India is certainly developing and who better than the corporate bigwigs to assimilate this fact. A GDP rise and rising FII is all the common mass reads in the newspaper, some get elated at the fact and some others prod on in insignificance, because for the common man its just undecipherable figures and statistics.
However, the Indian two-wheeler automobile industry has certainly measured the legitimacy of this claim and boosted its confidence. Three major two-wheeler companies have moved out of the joint-ventures (JV’s) with the Japanese majors. Escorts-Yamaha, TVS-Suzuki and Hero-Honda. While escorts-Yamaha does not create flutters, TVS –Suzuki causes a brow-rise, but Hero-Honda certainly pulls my attention out of the newspaper to the bright golden old days.
My maternal uncle had a Hero-Honda CD-100, one of the oldest and best products of this joint group. I was a tot when my uncle had given me a ride on that bike (oops I mean Motorcycle, with a accent on o) and I had fallen in love with it. When parked at the verandah, I would climb on the seat, and play with the (locked) handle, producing the engine sound with my vocal-chords and sometimes the horn-beep as well. My uncle was very passionate about his motorcycle, as it was the latest and best model of that time. His neighbors’ possessed Yezdi or Rajdoot or some scooter, but all eyed his coveted Hero-Honda motorcycle while he dusted it off. The blue color of the petrol tank stood it apart from the usual black body models. The sound of the engine revving was also soother and different from the others.
The other summer I went to my native place in Bengal, where vehicles were a sign of prosperity and authority. The village was underdeveloped and the people there were least bothered to develop it. There was this Kotu-kaku there who had recently got married to a wealthy girl from the nearby village. When I saw the ugly (not so good looking in mother’s words) uneducated, uncouth bride, I thought he must have done this at the gun-point, but his father was screaming out of pleasure , that the in-laws had blessed them (note the blessed part) with a double bed made from teak wood, an aluminum almirah,a score of other household furnishings and then with a pause and chest-inflated, head-raised and double-pitched voice he said ‘A HERO_HONDA’. Well, that seemed to justify the marriage and everyone present was congratulating the grooms’ father for finding such a match. However, later I discovered that the motorbike was not even a hero-honda, it was a different variant from a different company, but hey, as i told you before, Hero-honda had become the synonym for Bikes.
I had grown a little older than my age, or so I guessed, because I could not bring myself on the streets to play the Hero-Honda game with the neighbors’. Well, basically it was a very stupid game, but childhood is time to do stupid things. Alas, this is something I realize now. The Hero-Honda game was actually a peevish stupid race where you were supposed to pose as if humped on to a bike and hold an imaginary handle, and on the count of 3 you were supposed to splint but in this awkward posture and a vrooming sound. Later, my best-friend somu told me that the neghbouring government school had also incorporated this game in their annual-sports and I wondered whether it will make to Olympics someday. Such, was the craze of Hero-Honda.
As I grew up, eventually the Hero-Honda bike models saw an immense improvement and soon the youth became bike frenzy, thanks to the bollywood and local filmdom, who stepped out of their image of cycle-paddling, hard-working plebeians and/or conglomerates driving long international cars to young college students romancing with their muse in their motorbikes. The hero-honda saw a massive change in its sales and marketing. Ad jingles like ‘Desh ki dharkan’ and ‘Dhak Dhak go’ went a long way to build the brand. Eventually, it faced stiff competitions from home as well as off-shore companies, but it was the leader nonetheless.
And till about my 10th standard, I did not know that Hero-Honda is a joint venture between the Hero group and Japanese major, Honda. I thought Hero-Honda is a standalone Indian company, and that’s why it has been received better than the Suzuki or the Yamahas. It seems, I was not the lone person to hope so. The Munjals have decided to buy the 26% stake of the Hondas in Hero-Honda, and hence the 26-year old venture will be annulled . Hence, the brand name ‘Hero-Honda’ will become just’ Hero’, like the cycles. Well, this news is surprising but somewhere deep down melancholic as well. Just imagine the ‘Hero-Honda CBZ or Splendor’ renamed as ‘HERO CBZ or splendor’. Will it have the same zing? What will happen to the ‘Hero-Honda’ game? And I wonder if another ‘Kotu-Kaku’ in some other part of the country would settle for something less than a ‘Hero-Honda’?
I am not a market analyst or speculator, but one thing is certain. People like me,( and i am sure there are a lot of them)who have been so closely related with the brand Hero-Honda will take a long time to accept this change. But, the saying goes ‘The face of advertisement and the brains of marketing can sell any product’. So let the Indian, two-wheeler revolution begin.
