In The Fast Lane

Premium bikes’ popularity beats not just commuter bikes but also the sluggish economy

- K. Sunil Thomas

Harder, better, faster, stronger. Nope, we are not sampling Kanye West’s hit pop auto-tune. It just about encapsulates the yearnings of young bike lovers in India. They want more power and better performance, and it has triggered a paradigm shift in India’s two-wheeler market, which is the largest in the world.

“There are two types of bike buyers in India,” said Ravinder Singh, senior vice president (strategy and planning), Yamaha Motor India. “The innovators, the unconventional breed of riders who want something different, and then there are the ones who go with the crowd, who want a bike to commute. We have focussed on the innovators, and we have seen that every time we do something stylish and exciting, they accept it readily.”

And their numbers have crossed the tipping point. Last year, premium motorcycles (any bike priced over 1 lakh, or has an engine above 150cc) sales in India crossed the one million mark for the first time. It is a segment that has been growing much faster than the overall two-wheeler market. For instance, while total bike sales in the country last year grew by just 4.8 per cent, premium bike sales soared by 20 per cent. “The premium segment is definitely poised to grow in the next two to three years,” said Rajeev Singh, partner and automotive leader at the consultancy firm Deloitte.

Interestingly, this growth comes even as the automobile industry bears the brunt of the overall slowdown of the economy, with a decline in sales across all categories. But in the premium bikes category, new launches and the models that got word-of-mouth publicity performed exceedingly well. In the 500cc-plus segment, for instance, sales went up almost ten times, primarily due to Royal Enfield’s new 650cc models. In the 800cc-plus range, the CBR series from Honda sold well, while Triumph and Harley-Davidson models held their ground.