Piaggio India has planned to focus more on the iconic Vespa brand and give less importance to the affordable scooter range. The Italian 2-wheeler manufacturer is considering adding more variants to the Vespa lineup in order to enhance the presence of the brand in the Indian market. The Vespa LX125 saw positive response when it was launched in India and after the price cut, the manufacturer has seen growing demand for one of the most expensive scooters in India. Piaggio India has a target to sell around 90,000 units of the Vespa by December 2013.
The closest rival to the Vespa LX125 is the Honda Activa (as it is the market leader), which retails at Rs. 47,200/- (ex-showroom Delhi), while the Vespa LX125 costs Rs. 60,000/- (ex-showroom Delhi). The Vespa LX125 is indeed significantly costlier than its rivals and the manufacturer has no plans to introduce affordable scooter range anytime soon. Earlier, the Italian automaker had a plan to introduce mass market scooters for the Indian market to compete with the likes of the Honda Activa, Yamaha Ray and Suzuki Access and to churn out big volumes out of the affordable segment but now the company seems to be focusing on increasing the sales of their premium lifestyle product range.
We expect the additional variants of the Vespa launching in the Indian market this year will include a Vespa LX125 with a front disc brake, a sporty avatar of the Vespa scooter with intricate design elements and a 150cc performance version of the Vespa scooter with new colour schemes. We can also expect Piaggio to introduce fuel-injected automatic scooters starting from the year 2014. In terms of positioning the new variants, the sporty variant of the Vespa will sit above the existing model. The leading players in the scooter segment currently are Honda, Hero MotoCorp followed by TVS.
Source – Business Standard