Hero Moto Company to invest up to Rs 400 – Rs 500 crore in its European bicycle and electric bike businesses, aiming to grow revenues from abroad five-fold in the next few years, said its chairman Pankaj M Munjal. The group would use the fund in utilizing the resources in order to scale up its operations of existing businesses in the UK and Europe and to acquire a new company for which the talks are underway, he said.

In 2015, Group’s flagship Hero Cycles has acquired British bicycle and e-bike maker Insync and brought a strategic stake in HNF Group, German premium e-bike manufacturer together with the holding of IBG Beteiligungsgesellschaft Sachsen-Anhalt mbH this year. Munjal said that the investments in Insync and HNF and the third company will help the group to achieve the level of Rs 3,000 crore in the international business revenues.

He said that the manufacturing units of Hero Cycles across Ludhiana, Bihta (near Patna) and Ghaziabad are running at a capacity of 70-75 per cent. Currently, Hero is under the order backlog adding to that he said “We are at 70-75 per cent capacity. But the demand is at 130%.”

Hero Cycles is also in the process to set up an industrial park in Punjab for Rs 200 crore for expanding its capacity to 10 million units per annum. In regards to the auto component ventures, Munjal said that international sales is doing exceedingly well and the group has also a supply contract with BMW which has increased the schedule by 60 per cent.