Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Jan 17, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Jan 17, 2002 |
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Corporate
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Announcements LML thrust on variomatic scooters Anand Krishnamoorthy
NEW DELHI, Jan. 16 SCOOTER major LML Ltd is giving a major thrust to non-geared scooters by planning to launch three new variomatic scooters by the year-end, company officials said on Wednesday. `Cleo', `Clipper' and `Infinity' would add to the only variomatic scooter of LML, the `Trendy', the sources told Business Line. LML has displayed all the three new vehicles at the Auto Expo 2002 to gauge market response and get indications for pricing. "This is the last range of vehicles from the Piaggio stable for which technology has been transferred to us before they left the company in 1999,'' the sources said. Italy's Piaggio, an erstwhile technology and equity partner in LML, had left the country's third largest scooter maker in 1999 after a bitter board-room and legal battle. LML's promoters, the Singhania family, bought the equity stake from Piaggio. The entire new range of variomatic scooters would be four-stroke engines. The Cleo and Clipper will be 125-cc vehicles while the Infinity will be a 75-cc vehicle. While Cleo and Infinity will sport plastic bodies, a metal body would don the Clipper, the sources said. "Demand for variomatic scooters is really on the rise and we believe with just the Trendy, we will not be able to get the desired volumes,'' the sources said as the reason for readying more scooters. LML currently sells about 75 Trendy scooters a month. Conventional metal-bodied scooters have been losing a bit of ground to motorcycles. It is the variomatic scooters that are promising in the long run, analysts say. One of the recent successes in the variomatic scooter segment has been Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (Pvt) Ltd, a fully-owned subsidiary of Japan's Honda Motor Co. Honda's Activa, a 4-stroke 100-cc variomatic scooter, has managed to sell about 32,000 units in the nine months of the current financial year. Seeing the growth of variomatic scooters in recent times, Bajaj Auto Ltd and Kinetic Motors have also lined up several similar products. Kinetic recently unveiled the `Nova'. The sources said LML is hoping that with the launch of the three new scooters, it will be able to regain its position as the second largest scooter maker behind Bajaj Auto. Last year, TVS Motor Co — then TVS Suzuki Ltd — bumped LML out of the second position, aided by a strong sales performance of the Scooty. LML sold 99,517 scooters in April-December of the current financial year, which is about 24 per cent lower than 130,965 scooters sold in the same nine months of the last financial year. "As per an agreement when Piaggio exited the company, we will not be allowed to export Clipper. The other vehicles are all available for export,'' the sources said.
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