Splendour & Passion to be simply Hero

THE Hero Group will remove the Honda brand name from its flagship products Splendor and Passion by June this year as its owners,the Munjals,want to carve out an independent identity at the earliest.

The Honda name will disappear from brands that are owned by Hero.Four best-selling motorcycles Splendor,Passion,Glamour and Hunk belong to this category,senior Hero Honda officials said in a conference call with analysts on February 5.The rebranding will start from April,the officials said in the call.Splendor,a motorcycle fired by a 100cc engine,is the worlds most popular,with sales of around a million for the year ended 31 March,2010.Passion sells almost as much.

As stated in the recent past,the transition process is going to be smooth and gradual.Work is in progress with regard to new brand identity and related matters,which will be announced at an appropriate time.At this stage,we are not in a position to discuss the specifics, a Hero Honda spokesperson said.

CBZ and CD,two 150cc motorcycles where Honda owns the brands,will not be part of this exercise.

In all,Hero Honda sold 4.6 million motorcycles for the fiscal year ended 31 March,2010,of which Splendor and Passion accounted for over 45%.CBZ and CD,the bikes whose brand rights belong to Honda,account for over 30%.Of the two,CD is by far the more popular.Hero Honda has said it expects to sell over 5 million this fiscal.In December last year,the Hero group and Honda announced they were parting ways after a 26-year partnership.They will sign the final agreement for the share sale before the end of the current financial year.

Though the Munjal-controlled Hero group has recently signed a licensing agreement allowing it to use Hondas technology till 2014,the rebranding is being expedited to gain a foothold in international markets where it was not allowed to enter due to the joint venture agreement,analysts say.

Hero Honda is in the process of setting up distribution channels in growing international markets such as Latin America,South East Asia and Africa.Under the technology agreement,Hero Honda cannot use the Honda brand name if they make any changes in the existing products.Hero is also entitled to see new Honda models till June 2017.The new models,produced using Hondas technology,will carry a higher royalty rate than the current 2.7%,said a recent recent research report on Hero Honda by JP Morgan.

The countrys second biggest twowheeler maker Bajaj Auto has remodeled itself as a garage of independent brands,by distancing itself from the parent brand Bajaj and focusing on just four motorcycle brands Boxer,Discover,Pulsar and KTM.