Suzuki India will be concentrating on the Gixxer series that has been developed for the Indian market and will only bring CBU products as CKDs require more effort.
Suzuki Motorcycles India made a positive comeback with the Gixxer last year and its recently launched full-faired version the Gixxer SF has also opened to a positive response in the market. Given the fact that its efforts have paid off well, the company will continue to concentrate on the Gixxer series over the next 12-18 months that is expected to help the company gain a strong hold in the premium 150cc segment, it won’t launch any new bike in the 160-800cc space. The company won’t bring products via the Completely Knocked Down (CKD) route either and will only concentrate on CBU offerings in the premium bike space.
Suzuki dabbled with CKD assembly when it launched the Inazuma 250 last year. While the product was certainly good, it didn’t work out in the market due to the high pricing. The company did drop the prices later which led to the sales witnessing a significant boost and there was a huge demand built up when the product was discontinued, which the company can’t meet as of now. The 800cc and below segment requires far more effort stated the automaker and Suzuki is not looking towards making that effort.
Hence, Suzuki will concentrate on bringing only those motorcycles in the country that are being launched globally and will introduce the GSX-S1000 and GSX-S1000F in July this year that will be brought in via the CBU route. The automaker also negated the rumours of assembling the Hayabusa superbike in the country that will lead to a price cut of Rs. 5 lakhs. The Indian superbike space has grown exponentially as the 500cc and above segment sold 9130 units in the 2014-15 fiscal, a jump by three times from the 3424 units sold in 2013-14 fiscal.
