American motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson (HD) announced last month that it’s suspending its sales and manufacturing unit in India, however, as per a CNBC-TV18 report, the company is set to join hands with Hero MotoCorp to take forward its distribution in the Indian market.
The report mentions that HD has been in talks with Hero for a while now and the deal might get finalised by the end of October this year. Under this deal, Hero MotoCorp will be the official distributor for Harley-Davidson Motorcycles in India.
The immediate deal would focus on only the distribution and managing the extensive dealer network of HD in India which currently stands at 33 dealers.
The Quint reached out to Harley-Davidson for an official statement on the matter. We are yet to hear back from them.
Hero MotoCorp, on the other hand, is leveraging this as an opportunity to collaborate with HD so that it can gain some expertise and technologies from HD to deploy in its own middle-weight motorcycles. As per the report, this seems to be the primary reason why the deal is getting stalled.
Harley has already informed its dealers that if it is not able to sort out the issues with the distribution network till the end of the year it will renew service contracts with the dealers. Till then, HD is trying to deal with some of the concerns raised by dealers and the HD riding community in India.
Post the disclosure of the company’s operations shutting down n India, rumours were rife that it had to lay off at least 70 employees as part of its restructuring plans.
The company was also struggling in terms of sales as it had managed to sell around 27,000 models ever since its entry into the Indian market 10 years ago.
The coronavirus pandemic compounded the owes for the company which can be considered the wrecker in chief for HD’s India exit.
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