Indian Motorcycle eyes volume ramp-up with Scout 60

Mumbai: Luxury American superbike maker Indian Motorcycle, which is eyeing to corner 15 percent market share this year, has taken a strategic decision to introduce its cheapest model — the 1,000-cc Scout 60 — in the country.

The company, which has been focusing on 1200-cc and above category bikes segment in India, is also expecting to break even its domestic operations before 2020.

“We will be commercially launching the 1,000-cc Scout 60 next month and the 1,800-cc Springfield by September,” Polaris India Managing Director Pankaj Dubey told PTI here.

The American offroader company Polaris Industries Inc owns Indian Motorcyle brand.

“We hope to break even both our businesses, the offroader business of Polaris and the bikes business under Indian Motorcycle, before 2020,” Dubey said.

Priced at Rs 11.99 lakh, the Scout 60 is the lightest bike in terms of engine capacity as well as price point made by the company, Dubey said.

The company will also roll out the 1800-cc Springfield — the name derives from the place where Indian Motorcycle was born — in the country by September at Rs 30.6 lakh, making it the costliest and the heaviest model from its stable, he added.

Indian Motorcycle, which sells six models now — the Roadmaster, Chief, Scout 1, Chieftain, Chief Dark Horse 2 and the Chief Vintage 3 with a price tag of Rs 13.8 lakh to Rs 38 lakh in the market since May 2011 — had announced the prices of these two new models in April.

Dubey parried direct answer on whether bringing in the Scout 60 indicates the company is focusing on volume growth as competition is rising manifold, but said the superbikes market is still nascent in the country.

“We are growing at a pretty good clipping at 40-45 per cent so far this year. I am confident of meeting the 50 per cent sales jump we have targeted for this year and corner 15 per cent of the market share,” Dubey said.

Competition is increasing with the presence of as many as 15 players, with the costliest being the Italian MV Augusta which entered last month through a marketing tie-up with the Firodias, offering three models in the Rs 17 – 50 lakh range.

In 2015-16, the superbikes industry (500-cc and above) witnessed a paltry volume growth of 2.85 per cent at 10,234 units, from 9,940 units in the previous fiscal.

The mass volume market too grew at 2.7 per cent to 1,89,37,104 units.

As per industry reports, superbikes market clipped at 91 per cent CAGR between FY2012 and FY2016, from 773 units to 10,224 units.

With rising incomes and the growing biking culture, the market underwent some dramatic shift in FY2016 with the volume massively shifting in favour of above 500-cc or above Rs 5 lakh models.

In FY2015, out of the 9,940 units sold almost 65 per cent or 5,828 units were under 500-cc models, while in FY2016, this became just the opposite — 6,342 of the 10,224 units were above 500-cc models, according to industry estimates.

PTI