TVS Motor Company has indicated that the first set of products out of its strategic partnership with BMW Motorrrad will be rolled out by next year. It has confirmed that the project was on track to introduce super bikes in the fast growing sub-500cc segment.
The company’s Chairman & Managing Director Venu Srinivasan had said that the first bike from the partnership project will be introduced during the second of this fiscal.
However, the management, during the second quarter results conference call, indicated that the TVS-BMW product roll-out will happen early next year.
“The project is progressing as per schedule. There is absolutely no delay and the new bikes will be launched next year. We will announce the details along with our partners,” S G Murali, Chief Financial Officer, TVS Motor Company told The Hindu.
In April 2013, TVS announced a strategic partnership with BMW Motorrad to design and make sub-500 cc bikes both for domestic and global markets. TVS has invested about 20 million euros in the alliance. BMW had showcased a concept bike from TVS alliance in Brazil. “We believe this tie-up would give an aspiration value to TVS products, particularly premium ones,” said a report of Motilal Oswal Securities (MOS).
Presently, TVS doesn’t have any product offering in the above-250 cc segment, which is expected to report stronger growth than other categories. The above-250cc segment has two different categories of super bikes — sports and cruiser. Both the categories have been flooded with numerous models at varied price points. While sports segment has models from Kawasaki, Bajaj KTM and a few others, the cruiser bike category is dominated by Royal Enfield and Harley-Davidson.
According to estimates of MOS, India is the third biggest market for above-250 cc bikes with annual volumes of over four lakh units. Europe and U.S. are the two biggest premium markets in the world with annual volumes of about 4.5 lakh units.
