'We were running and also changing shoes at the same time'

B Govindarajan, CEO of Royal Enfield says that the brand is widening its product portfolio and adding more markets to reinforce its leadership in the global mid-size market,

- Ketan Thakkar.

AS NEW GLOBAL competition embarks on their India journey, Royal Enfield, the undisputed, mid-size motorcycle leader is spreading wings globally and in turn will challenge the likes of Harley-Davidson and Triumph in their own home turf. With the highest ever annual capex, the maker of the fabled Bullet motorcycle is readying itself for a product onslaught. In an interview to Autocar Professional, B Govindarajan, the CEO of Royal Enfield says, the company is not perturbed and is instead focusing on its own path of adding new products and new markets to reinforce its leadership in the global mid-size market.

It has been a remarkable decade for RE, how do you see the journey so far?

Royal Enfield brand is at the centre of everything that we do. It has been an all-round success story of product, technology, quality, supply chain and distribution network.

We have got these tenets in place to deliver a pure motorcycling experience. Our philosophy is -- less is more. We do a few things, but we do it very well.

From 2011 to 2018, it was an outstanding growth story, followed by a challenge between 2019-2020. But, we reset ourselves and used the time to prepare for the next decade beyond the UCE architecture.

A lot of companies were struggling to transition to new emission norms. At RE, we were running and also changing shoes at the same time.

We managed the transition well and that helped us in a strong market outperformance.

One was transitioning to new norms, but there was a strong emphasis on pushing boundaries globally and also catering to the Indian audience, right?