Royal Enfield continues to lead in premium motorcycle sales with KTM being a distant second. Harley-Davidson comes in third while Triumph and Kawasaki continue to fight it out for the fourth spot. The popular Japanese bike makers continue to lag at the end.
Premium motorcycles in India are becoming more popular every year with more and more people looking to own these fast machines. Looking at the soaring demand for these bikes in the country, more 2-wheeler manufacturers have entered off late including two of the biggest from Italy, Ducati and Benelli. We already have BMW Motorrad and Aprilia while MV Agusta will soon find its way here. But since all the three Italian brands aren’t part of SIAM and BMW Motorrad works on a dealer import model, sales figures for these brands isn’t available.
This means we only have numbers for eight brands in the premium motorcycle space. The leader is of course Royal Enfield which sells a crazy amount of bikes in India, exporting a very minor chunk of its sales. Coming in at number two is KTM, the 200cc models bringing in the numbers. Sales of KTM bikes have soared post the launch of the RC series. What is common between the Bullet manufacturer and the Duke maker is that both companies locally manufacture their bikes, keeping prices competitive. The Classic 350 is the shining armour for the British brand.
Harley-Davidson comes in at third and majority of its sales come from low-end models, the Street 750 leading the charge while the SuperLow and Iron 883 are also doing good numbers. Interestingly other than Honda and Yamaha, all companies are selling at least a single unit of all its bikes, even the highly expensive CVO Limited which costs upwards of Rs. 50 lakhs is selling although in single digits. But there were no takers for the CBR1000RR or the R1 (maybe deliveries of the new R1 hasn’t started yet). The only Honda big bike which is selling is the Gold Wing, it was launched not long ago.
Triumph has a big line-up and is doing decent numbers with the Bonneville being the top-seller thanks to it being the cheapest bike in the range and some finance offers from the company (the Rs. 9990/- EMI offer in association with HDFC bank). In fact, when both the Bonneville bikes are combined (the standard and T100), almost 50 percent of Triumph sales are just these. The Daytona sells in decent numbers and buyers of the Street Triple are unfazed by the lower 85 PS power output (79 PS as per ARAI). Maybe dealers are throwing in attractive discounts or accessories.
Suzuki is still clearing stock of the now discontinued Inazuma while the new GSX launches are selling and the Hayabusa continues to be in good demand. This brings us to Kawasaki which is doing decently well with its CBU bikes (19 sold last month). The Ninja H2 isn’t on sale anymore as all allotted bikes are sold out while the Ninja 650 and ER-6n seem to have taken a lot of heat from Benelli’s 4-cylinder TNT 600i. The Ninja 300 continues to sell decently for what is a Rs. 4 lakh plus bike now.
What simply doesn’t sell is the Z250, Kawasaki sold a paltry 3 units last month which makes the cost of assembling this bike unfeasible in the long run. Expect Kawasaki to take action by either adding ABS and dropping prices or by replacing the Z250 with the Z300 in the near future. The launch of the single-cylinder Kawasakis is sure to boost volumes of the Ninja maker.
