They form a tiny niche in India’s volume-heavy motorcycle market. But when it comes to growth, super bikes are in top gear on Indian roads. Riding on the home-grown Royal Enfield along with some iconic global brands like Harley Davidson, Triumph, Suzuki, Yamaha and Honda, the creamy layer of the motorcycle market, the 10,000 unit strong segment is attracting enough eyeballs and customer interest for the players to kick in with more models, greater localization and network expansion.
Take Royal Enfield, still the brand with the largest footprint in the 250cc-plus motorcycle market. Despite the slowdown, RE is revving up both volumes and profitability. “We produced and sold 180,000 units in calendar 2013 and we are aiming for 250,000 units in 2014,” said Siddhartha Lal, MD & CEO, Eicher Motor Ltd, the parent company for Royal Enfield. “We’re actually gunning to cross that target so demand is higher.”
With the Continental GT just out in the market, RE is also firing on all cylinders, delaying its production revamp to squeeze out more volumes from both its old and new plants near Chennai. “The transition from the old plant to the new will be slower so the old plant brings in more capacity this year,” said Lal. “We’re adding phase 2 and 3 as we ramp up for 2014 and 2015. The new site should give us 600,000 units ultimately.”
Harley Davidson, the first of the goliaths, has just rolled out its first “new platform family” with the aggressively priced Street 750. “It’s the first new platform for us in 14 years and the aggressive pricing (just over . 4 lakh) should bring us a new set of customers,” said Anoop Prakash, MD, Harley Davidson India. “We will have more models and variants off this platform. We now have 4,000 Harley owners in India since 2010 and we expect to clock high double-digit growth this year.”
The super bike market – excluding RE – currently makes up for around 10,000 units a year. Of that, the top end – in the . 5 lakh plus category – comprise a mere 3,000 units. Compare that to the roughly 800,000 bikes sold every month in India and the disparity becomes obvious. As does the potential. “Back in 2008-9, this segment was just 450 units a year,” said Vimal Sumbly, MD, Triumph Motorcycles India. “This market took off when Harley set up shop in India.” British heritage brand Triumph is camping here with its “full range of 10 models and we’ve already got 160 bookings from our first unveiling in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. We should hit 500 units by end-March and 1000 units by the end of calendar 2014,” he said.
One of the reasons why global super bike brands are kicking up some action in India, despite the small numbers, is the way the luxury end of the automobile market has managed to buck the slowdown that’s now blighted India’s once shining growth story. As Indians scale up from commuter bikes to more performance-oriented models, the trickle-up will benefit these leisure segment products as well. Said Shirish Kulkarni, MD, DSK Motowheels which handles the Hyosung brand in India: “The 250cc segment will soon be what the 150 cc commuter-plusperformance segment used to be just a couple of years ago. The 250-600cc segment should grow upwards of 20%.”
Take Royal Enfield, still the brand with the largest footprint in the 250cc-plus motorcycle market. Despite the slowdown, RE is revving up both volumes and profitability. “We produced and sold 180,000 units in calendar 2013 and we are aiming for 250,000 units in 2014,” said Siddhartha Lal, MD & CEO, Eicher Motor Ltd, the parent company for Royal Enfield. “We’re actually gunning to cross that target so demand is higher.”
With the Continental GT just out in the market, RE is also firing on all cylinders, delaying its production revamp to squeeze out more volumes from both its old and new plants near Chennai. “The transition from the old plant to the new will be slower so the old plant brings in more capacity this year,” said Lal. “We’re adding phase 2 and 3 as we ramp up for 2014 and 2015. The new site should give us 600,000 units ultimately.”
Harley Davidson, the first of the goliaths, has just rolled out its first “new platform family” with the aggressively priced Street 750. “It’s the first new platform for us in 14 years and the aggressive pricing (just over . 4 lakh) should bring us a new set of customers,” said Anoop Prakash, MD, Harley Davidson India. “We will have more models and variants off this platform. We now have 4,000 Harley owners in India since 2010 and we expect to clock high double-digit growth this year.”
The super bike market – excluding RE – currently makes up for around 10,000 units a year. Of that, the top end – in the . 5 lakh plus category – comprise a mere 3,000 units. Compare that to the roughly 800,000 bikes sold every month in India and the disparity becomes obvious. As does the potential. “Back in 2008-9, this segment was just 450 units a year,” said Vimal Sumbly, MD, Triumph Motorcycles India. “This market took off when Harley set up shop in India.” British heritage brand Triumph is camping here with its “full range of 10 models and we’ve already got 160 bookings from our first unveiling in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. We should hit 500 units by end-March and 1000 units by the end of calendar 2014,” he said.
One of the reasons why global super bike brands are kicking up some action in India, despite the small numbers, is the way the luxury end of the automobile market has managed to buck the slowdown that’s now blighted India’s once shining growth story. As Indians scale up from commuter bikes to more performance-oriented models, the trickle-up will benefit these leisure segment products as well. Said Shirish Kulkarni, MD, DSK Motowheels which handles the Hyosung brand in India: “The 250cc segment will soon be what the 150 cc commuter-plusperformance segment used to be just a couple of years ago. The 250-600cc segment should grow upwards of 20%.”
