Hero Honda formally became Hero MotoCorp towards the end of last month and its website had changed to Hero MotoCorp by the 1st of August. Hero MotoCorp unveiled their new logo and the first two products that will come branded as just Hero without the Honda suffix (even though the off road motorcycle and a bigger scooter are pure Honda machines) on the 9th of August at the O2 Arena in London. The Hero Group have always been very patriotic and so it was no surprise that they used the 15th of August, the day of Indian Independence to reveal their new identity to the general public. Every major newspaper carried a full first page advertisement announcing the change and the new logo while every TV channel carried ads of the newly renamed company announcing the rise of a new Hero. All commercials had a catchy song whose music had been penned down by the great A R Rahman and song by the great man himself. The chorus of the song goes “hum mein hein Hero”. The number of times the ad was repeated on all channels is an indication of how serious Hero MotoCorp is in its endeavour of establishing itself as the entity that is as good as Hero Honda without the Honda name. Obviously truck loads of money have gone into the whole process and one wishes the world’s top motorcycle company the best of luck in its new avatar. Hero MotoCorp has shown good business acumen by taking on the new identity very much before it was required to. It could have continued as Hero Honda till 2014. That it chose not to is indication of how serious it is about reinventing itself as a credible alternative to not just itself (Hero Honda) but also to Honda and the rest of manufacturers who will be seeing this as an opportunity to dethrone the leader. However, this is just the beginning. Honda still holds the right to the nomenclature of CD and CBZ. By 2014 Hero will have to either surrender the rights to use the CD and CBZ monikers on their bikes or pay huge royalties to Honda. This is obviously a situation loaded in favour of Honda and Hero will have to find ways to deal with that. That they have given themselves good time to find alternatives or to deal with problems such as that is indeed very good thinking. The future maybe very exciting.