Rubber meets the road in premium bike market

livemint.com:

Hero MotoCorp Ltd in partnership with Harley Davidson has launched the Harley-Davidson X440, and Bajaj Auto Ltd in collaboration with Triumph Motorcycles launched Speed 400. Both these motorbikes are in the above-250 cc segment and have been priced competitively, opening the doors for better customer acceptance. “We think this will lead to faster premiumization of the two-wheeler industry," said Kumar Rakesh, an analyst at BNP Paribas Securities India, in a report on 6 July.

Investors in Hero and Bajaj Auto are excited, perhaps a bit more than warranted at this stage. Shares of both automakers hit new 52-week highs on Thursday. Speed 400 is priced at ₹223,000 for the first 10,000 units and ₹233,000 thereafter.

This is roughly in line with base variant of Harley-Davidson X440. Pricing of both vehicles is at about 20% premium when compared to base variant of Eicher Motors Ltd’s Royal Enfield (RE) Classic 350 cc. “Speed 400’s aggressive pricing shows Bajaj Auto’s determination to disrupt the segment, after having failed to do so with Avenger and Dominar earlier," said BNP report.

Speed 400 will be available through Triumph’s dealership network, which is likely to expand to 100 showrooms across 80 cities by FY24-end. Scrambler 400 X will be launched in October and the price will be revealed later. However, it is worth noting that Triumph’s success in India has not been impressive.