Japanese two-wheeler major Yamaha which has forayed into the fast-growing scooter segment in India with the Ray, has registered 5,000 bookings for the scooter within less than a week of launch.

Mr. Roy Kurien, national business head, India Yamaha Motor said, "The Ray has been received well. Though we were targeting the young female buyer with the scooter, some bookings have come in from men as well. Overall, we have around 5000 bookings for the scooter."

The company is looking at selling 45,000-50,000 units of the Ray by the year-end.

The Ray is Yamaha's first product in the scooter market in India. Mr. Kurien declined to share specific of product plans in the category but informed the company is eyeing a 20% market share in the segment by 2016.

Yamaha has recently announced an investment of Rs. 15 billion (US$ 279.3 million) to build a third factory at Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

"We made an announcement to build a new factory in Chennai and plan to start this new factory from January 2014. With this capacity expansion, we are targeting to achieve one million units sales by 2014. We are planning to expand our sales to two million units by 2016 and to 2.8 million units by 2018," India Yamaha Motor chief executive and managing director Hiroyuki Suzuki said at the launch of Ray.

The company expects 30% of its sales to come from scooters by 2016. The Ray, targeted at college students and young working women, is priced at Rs. 46,000.

The scooter category, which accounted for about 11% of total demand at approximately 900,000 units in 2006, has grown rapidly over the last five years to reach about 18% of total market at around 2.4 million units in 2011.

Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI), with models such as Activa and Dio, have a lion's share of around 50% in the category. To take on competition, Yamaha designed the Ray exclusively for India for launch in the segment.