The Hindu Business Line : Bajaj's strategy to boost visibility in TN

The strategy was to "populate the Tamil Nadu market with Bajaj vehicles and (thereby) improve visibility for Bajaj," Mr R.L. Ravichandran, Vice-President - Business Development and Marketing, Bajaj Auto Ltd, said here on Saturday.

The company hopes the vehicle, Boxer AT, will attract the "entry-level" motorcycle buyers, particularly the buyers of second-hand vehicles, who buy a used motorbike at around Rs 26,000 and spend a few thousands more on doing it up. But now, for the same spend, the buyer can have a new vehicle.

Mr Ravichandran noted that the vehicle was aggressively priced vis-à-vis the competing vehicles in that category, Hero Honda's Dawn and TVS' Max.

Bajaj has hired comedian Vivek to endorse the vehicle.

The company had planned to launch two new vehicles this year (the Boxer AT does not count among them). One has been launched - the CT 100 priced around Rs 32,000. The other, a vehicle codenamed K-60, whose brandname has just been announced as `Discover' is a 120+ cc vehicle. It will be launched nationally in August.

With `Discover', Bajaj hopes to make a dent in the `Executive' segment of the market, which is dominated by Hero Honda's Splendour range of motorcycles. The Discover (like the Pulsar) is an indigenously developed vehicle (not one made with technology from Bajaj's collaborator, Kawasaki). As such, Bajaj has been able to customise the vehicle for Indian use, and also save royalty costs.

Mr Ravichandran said that last year, Bajaj sold a million motorcycles and expected to grow this year by around 10 per cent, the same rate as the projected market growth.

Bajaj exported vehicles worth about Rs 500 crore last year — roughly one out of every Rs 10 of its sales came from exports. It exported 1.5 lakh two wheelers. In the current year, the company expects exports to increase by some 35 per cent in volume terms.

Mr Ravichandran said that Bajaj's motorbikes were of Japanese design and offered at `less than Chinese' prices, hence they were selling well in the overseas markets. But another reason for the optimism this year is the fact that Kawasaki has started buying Bajaj vehicles for sales in the Philippines.

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