Plans afoot for ‘Made in India’ 300-500cc superbikes: Motoroyale Kinetic MD

The company is setting up a new assembly plant with 60,000 units capacity at Supa in Maharashtra at an outlay of Rs 12 crore, he said during the launch of a dealership. The company currently imports high-powered motorbikes or superbikes in a completely knocked down (CKD) position and assembles the same at its plant at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra. There are ideas to develop 300cc-500cc motorbike in the price range of Rs 2-3 lakh in India. The plans will go live in 2021, Ajinkya Firodia, Managing Director, Motoroyale Kinetic said here.

Whether it would be developed by the Indian company on its own or it would partner with a foreign motorbike maker would be decided later, he said. Motoroyale Kinetic announced their first brand association with MV Agusta, an Italian brand in May 2016, followed by an international joint venture with Norton, a British motorcycle brand in November 2017. Earlier this month, the company announced their tie-up with three additional international brands – SWM, FB Mondial and Hyosung.

The company sells bikes in the price range of Rs 3-60 lakh. Meanwhile, the company’s Rs 12 crore new assembly plant at Supa is expected to go on stream soon.

Currently the motorbikes imported in CKD units are assembled at group company Kinetic Engineering property in Ahmednagar which has capacity of 8,000 units. Firodia said once the company starts shipping the British brand Norton motorbikes to other Southeast Asian markets then the current capacity would get utilised. The Kinetic group has a 51:49 joint venture with Norton to assemble motorbikes in India and sell the same in other markets.

“We will be importing and selling only 37 units of Norton bikes – Commando and Dominator models – as limited edition. All the 37 bikes will have only the parts used to make the bikes in Norton’s UK plant. After that, Norton brand bikes will be rolled out of our facility here for Indian and other neighbouring markets,” Firodia said. According to him, the Norton’s 650cc motorbike will be launched in India in 2020 and the same would be made in India later localizing various components.

The target for next year will be 2,500 units. “By 2019 we will have 18 dealers in top Indian cities,” he added. He said the market size for the superbikes in India is about 13,000 units and is logging 20 per cent growth. Firodia said the group is also looking at raising about Rs 75-100 cr from private equity (PE) by diluting 20-30 per cent stakes in the holding company for the superbikes ventures.