Haryana gets Harley’s assembly plant
New Delhi, Nov. 2: Days ahead of the visit of the US President, Mr Barack Obama, US cult bike maker Harley Davidson said it will start assembling bikes in India from next year.
The US iconic brand was allowed to enter India in 2007 while mangoes from here were allowed to be sold in America. However, Harley Davidson first started selling its imported bikes in India from this year.
The Indian plant will be only its second facility outside its homebase after Brazil, the company said highlighting the significance of economic ties between the two countries.
“President Obama’s visit is not only a strategic one but it has economic interests. The strengthening of business ties between the two countries (the US and India) gives us the confidence to invest further here,” Harley Davidson India managing director, Mr Anoop Prakash, told reporters here on Tuesday.
After prolonged negotiations, India had relaxed emission norms for big bikes above 800cc in order to let Harley Davidson sell its products here after the US agreed to allow Indian mangoes to be sold there in 2007. The assembly plant will come up at 70,000 square feet of land at Bawal in Haryana.
“The plant is likely to be operational by the first half of next year and investments in it will be a part of tens of millions of dollars that we are making in India,” he said.
Mr Prakash, however, declined to specify the installed capacity of the plant that would assemble completely knocked down (CKD) units of bikes.
He said the company will assemble only a few models out of the 12 bikes that it sells in India priced between `7.79 lakh and `38.66 lakh.
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