Psyco has a point and so does Ken !

The entire gist of this post is that there are people in the entire spectrum who have a point and we have lived without many options for far too long.

- guys with mom's and dad's worrying have a birth right to ride a 100cc
- guys consciously wanting to commute on 100cc have a right to choose to do so
but
- why should guys who want to step up in power, cc's, torque not have a right to choice..... there are quite a few of those in the country of 1 billion with a population at least equivalent of Australia in the affluent category or a sizable % who want go that way!!

Dude, I feel there are many cases in which the companies fail to read the market. Best eg is Royal Enfield: I had a lot of sessions with the market manager about their strategy, There point on not selling the electra X and previously on the UCE 500 was that the Indian market cannot afford it(say 1.25L bike). Though we stressed a lot that its not right, they were not fully convinced. You remember when the 500LB was released it was supposed to be a limited edition just 500 pieces, (well there are other reasons for that too). Now they are slowly activating their grey cells.

To an extent when yamaha RD350 might fall as an eg to this.

and I would say the HH has a good study on the market

Well RD was never cheap too , when bullet costed 9 k , RD used to be for 18 and the cool japanese car (read m800) was for 27k.Still a lot of ppl bought the RD despite the huge price.

These days marketing strategy of HH is worst(at least i feel so ) and probably the best is YAMAHA and TVS, Yamaha is back and TVS came from nowhere and gave us some good bikes

@Mr. Ken.

Thank you for replying, it feels great when somebody reads your post and replies, this is my first write. Talking about bengal your opinions are 100% true. I know Bangalore and other places has got more sbks than bengal. Its normal that some place will grow fast and other will not, but the problem is not with the place, the poblem is in us......you want a super bike and me too, but how many peoples besides you and me also wants them ??

Say we have 1000+ members in XBHP, and may be there are 100K+ other people who loves bike, but this 100K people doesn't makes this country.

If someone wants to spend say 10 lakh for a vehicle, he will buy a four wheeler but not import a superbike, then why will the companies make bigger bikes ?? I agree that some people are different, some buys SBKs, but their counts are too few. Bikes here in India are mainly sold for youths, and our Dads and Uncle still goes for smaller CC bikes. And then rash drivers, for them the whole bikers community are becoming criminals..You love bike and people will call you MAD, even my mom, dad and others has the same opinion for me.

There are two solutions, like what Yamaha did, they brought a 150 cc and priced it 1 lakh, people love it and bought it, so other also should have the guts and do the same........now we cant except that suddenly companies will bring 500+ cc bikes in this market and price them 3-4 lakhs, it need to grow slowly for our country..then people will change and try something new.........One sentence from someone "People of our country dont like changes" (i have heard it somewhere, but cant remember whose line it is)

And the other solution is we need to take initiatives, we need to show them that we want something new other than pulsars and rtr, i aint saying they are bad bikes, they are really good, vut we want something new.

AAp ne mere muh ki baat cheen li


I have just bought an Aquila yesterday for the simple reason that there is no choice in the 250 cc twin machine except the aquila.this is the only thing to hit the Indian shores in a century of biking history .
I had a choice between the thunderbird and Aquila and i choose the latter .I paid 110grand for 2003 june model xlnt condition .pl let me know if my decision was right or not

There isn't any better. I think you got a decent price too if it is in excellent condition. I just hope that you manage to cover services and spares without having to run from pillar to post.

Or get your parts imported yourself by preempting the needs. Coz Kinetic is not going out of its way to help you. That is the sad part. Else, I rode the Comet for 2 years, 15K kilometres, touring till Gramphu, Jaipur, Agra... I was more than happy.

I understood what you said, you and me have the same feeling of trying something new.......and i also agree with your opinion of its taking too long for new bikes...hope the manufacturers and others are reading this topic and learning something.

It isn't that Bajaj/TVS cannot go the whole hog and give us a 40Bhp+ twin for under 3 Lakhs or so. The issue is that they don't want to. All that, the Indian manufacturers want to do is to milk the market to the maximum and focus on the economuter segment. Now they are slowly upping the ante and are have a slew of 150s. Next, they will move to the 180-200cc category. Why? Simply because they do not want to leave the categories "in-between" unexploited. A few thousand enthusiasts crying hoarse for better powered machines just isn't enough for the Indian manufacturers. Though we, the dyed-in-the-wool bikers are prepared to go out and buy 400cc+ machines, we just do not represent enough money, which the millions of the economuters do. So, the bike manufacturers will continue to stick to their small increments approach till the market is "ripe" wnough for them to exploit. Till then, we just have to wait and hope for the best, like we have been doing for the last two decades. Profits, not passion is what dictates motorcycle manufacturing in this country and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Hi Ken Bro,

Well, I feel that even we bikers have different choices. This further breaks up the market. It's not that we are "LESS" in amount. The problem is that, We are all different in needs & demands.

For instance, There may be about 5000 Xbhp bikers who can want to & can purchase a Sbk potentially (if priced fairly), with about 1 Lacs in this country as a whole... ok?

And For example, if Yamaha releases a FZ6 now at 5 Lacs, Will all of you buy it?
No, I bet many of you won't! And you all have your reasons:-->

- you might "then" say that 400 is more appropriate,
- you might want a litre class,
- you might say "Ok, good job Yamaha! but I'll purchase it maybe next year or 2 or 3"
- you might say "I want a Fairing. Bad job Yamaha!"
- you might say "Yuck, FZ6 sounds like a Sewing Machine"


What do you have to say to this? Can we ever be united for "One Particular Bike"?? CBU is different, but in country production requires large sales to make it a success.

Atleast, I can take any 600, and try to adjust it for my whatever needs.

But, can all of us do that? No, we cannnot... Being Humans, we all have choices...

and that kills the market for ever. Hence, "In country SBK" Chapter Closed by Manufacturers.

Leave a 400 cc twin Bajaj has still not properly made a channel of Probiking showrooms.
Speaking about Raipur C.G. There is no probiking in Chhattisgarh the Bajaj dealer brings P220 from Frontier Bajaj Jabalpur M.P.
TVS is the same RTR Fi can't be serviced by Mechanics here they call mechs from Nagpur to service the RTR Fi.
First these kind of service issues need to be resolved. Here we have A Hayabusa, CBR 1000 RR, 600 RR, Aquila, Comet etc. So why we are behind on the Manufacturer list.

ot:jasmeetji by the end of next month maybe, raipur will have a probiking.We talked to that guy who owns the bajaj outlets

what i want to say that even if there is a decent costing well powered motorcycle out there(somewhere in someone's gray cells), there will not be a good service backup, especially in the smaller cities or towns.So the bikers here, although they might have the financial requirements to buy such a machine, ight just stay away from it, to avoid the after sales problems

Hi!
Some very pertinent points have been put up by people here. However, from what I have read so far in this thread, most people have focussed on mainly on the safety issues involved, lack of supporting infrastructure and the individual responsibility of the owners of the bike. However, when we discuss the current paucity of options in the premium bike segment for us, we must also discuss it from the perspective of the bike maker. This has been touched upon well by a few members but i feel i should maybe elaborate a bit more.Perhaps i can point out a few important points having seen such decisions being made from close quarters.

Now I believe that when we see this from a corporate's point of view, the issues such as safety, infrastructure and rider capabilities get thrown out of the window. Having personally been part of a few product launches( though mosly in the banking sector), I can personally vouch for the fact that such dilemmas are non existant for most corporates. Only the top line and bottom lines count. Now typically when a new product is proposed to be launched, the following is the chronological order in which the process charts out.

First the product is coneptualised and it's attributes are put down on paper. Next, the various costs of production are worked. For example, while launching a financial product, we would work out the size of the team required to launch it, maintain it as well as the amount required in making it accessible to the customer and give it what is called as "top of the mind recall" ( The goal is that say when a customer has to buy a bar of soap,your brand must be in the 5 brands that would instinctively spring to his mind).

After this, usually a market research company is hired to painstakingly identify the target market(geography, demography,etc of the customer likely to go for the product). Once this is done, exercise such as focus group discussions are held with people from various walks of life being presented with the product and then asked to speak freely about it. For a bike that would mean calling uncles, students, young executives and then giving them an idea about the bike's features, a look at the concept design, it's price and then asking them to speak freely about it. We would also bring in the gatekeepers or influencers(people who though not users of the product, are an important part of the customer's buying decision). This means we would bring in uncle's aunties, your mothers, sisters, fathers and girl friends too. After this discussion we are able to segment exactly the kind of customers who would be ready to buy the bike at the given price.

Now we bring out the latest census results and look up exactly how many people in India fall under that segment. We would then remove the people who have bought a bike within say last 1-1.5 years as those unlikely to buy our bike. after that we would remove a sizeable chunk (may vary depending on the type of product and pricing) just to account for the fact that a majority of people simply say that they would buy a say 500 cc bike for 5 lakh but when they actually have to buy it, they chicken out. I mean it's easy to say that I would give my right ball for an R1, when I know that such a deal is unlikely to be proposed to me ( moderators please excuse). However, if such a situation does present itself, would i really be as accomodating? At such a moment it's natural for people to start thinking about the financial issues involved, practicality, etc.

So, after removing this last chunk we finally arrive at our Target Market. Believe me for the kind of bike that we are discussing here, the target market would be really really niche. Since we have such a small taraget market the company would then see the kind of returns that they would if they were to launch a product vis-a-vis the costs involved. Believe me the fact that road conditions are bad or whether the people can safely handle the machine would never even touch anybody's minds (the roads would be considered at the time of designing/conceptualising). With hardly any successful lawsuits ever filed in India against motor companies like they are in the US, no one is likely to break a sweat about whether the brat born with a silver spoon in his mouth has the requisite head on his shoulders to drive such a bike.

Anyway, after such an analysis, if the results show that such a product has a demand in the market good enough that the product will break-even(the point when sales=expenses) in the near future (large comapanies are usually ready to take losses for years, if they see a possibility of making profit say 5 years down the line), then the product will get the go ahead and would be launched.

Now, I seriously think that in order to make profit from a bike which has a very niche market, the company would find from their analysis that they would have to sell the bike at a higher price than they previously thought. And as soon as they raise the price, from renewed market research they would find that now even lesser people are willing to buy their bike at the new price. Believe me, it is a circle vicious enough to cause severe heaches to a regiment of analysts.

So, as per the current scenario, most bike makers probably don't see launching a premier bike as a step that would add to either their top line or their bottom line even 5 years down the line. As soon as they see that the market may become receptive to such a bike after say 3 years, they would immediately launch the bike and would be ready to take losses for the 3 years, in hope for making the profit when the market improves (this is done so as to gain what we call the "first mover's advantage).
So, no matter how much us bikers may rave and rant, we must realise that that bike makers make bikes to earn money and no one would be ready to stake their career on the fact that a few sentimental bikers like us are raving and ranting on an online community to launch a premium bike. And I don't really blame them. I don't want a product manager being rendered unemployable just because I am crazy about bikes!

Chalo, I didn't mean to offend anyone here but I just wanted to bring in this perspective to the discussion (that and the fact that with the recession hitting the banking sector, I have no work for me in the afternoon!). Gosh! this was a looooong post..he he

Oh by the way, I also have a theory about why the high duties on bike imports are justifiable. but i would save that for later when i am free again or when someone incites me to produce it...
Don't get me wrong... I am all for premium bikes....just playing the devil's advocate here . After all everyone has a right to be heard....even our so called "lazy" babus (as someone called them,but I beg to differ).

So tomorrow afternoon it is then , for the next piece of writing?