Royal Enfield’s Cheyyar plant to be run entirely by women

Motorcycle maker Royal Enfield’s Cheyyar two-wheeler plant will be an all-women plant. In August 2024, the company had a soft launch of the plant and currently is engaged in plating and auto buffing of parts.

“At Cheyyar, we have built our first all-women assembly line and the energy there is something else. Focused, confident, full of pride and we’re not stopping there. We’re now working towards making Cheyyar Royal Enfield’s first all-women plant, with a 100 per cent female workforce,” B Govindarajan, Managing Director, Eicher Motors and CEO of Royal Enfield, said in a social media post.

Govindarajan noted that when the company began its diversity journey a few years ago, the diversity ratio stood at just 5 per cent, and today they have made significant progress. “We’re now at 20 per cent across the organisation. This momentum is tangible, and it’s transforming the way we work,” he added.

The company’s Vallam facility now has the highest number of women employees at any single Royal Enfield facility, which accounts for 26 per cent of the workforce there, Govindarajan said.

“From engineering and manufacturing to management and business roles, there’s a strong and growing presence of women shaping Royal Enfield’s future every day. In FY25 alone, 24 per cent of our new hires were women, surpassing our overall gender diversity target for the year,” he said.

Commenting on Govindarajan’s post, Sunil Dixit, President-Operations, Schwing Stetter India wrote that the company’s global manufacturing facility at Schwing Stetter Cheyyar is also powered by 25 per cent women employees on shop floor, and they are the best welders/assemblers and machine operators.

In 2023, Ashok Leyland, the country’s leading commercial vehicle manufacturer, launched a new “All Women production Line” with 100 women employees at its Hosur plant. Similarly, Elgi Equipments, a maker of air compressors, also said in 2023 that its assembly lines in the city of Coimbatore are now being run by women. Ola is another auto maker with a substantial number of women in its production line in its Hosur plant.

This trend is also in line with the findings of the recent Annual Survey of Industries.

Over 43 per cent of India’s total women factory workforce was employed in Tamil Nadu, the survey showed.

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Published on June 9, 2025