BMW Motorrad, the motorcycle division of German luxury carmaker BMW today launched their ‘Made In India’ motorcycles the G310 R and G310 GS in the Indian market. The G310 R, a road racer, has been priced at Rs 2.99 lakh and the G310 GS, an off-road endurance motorcycle has been priced at Rs 3.49 lakh. They both share the same 313cc, 34 horsepower engine, chassis and six-speed gearbox The motorcycles which BMW developed and produces in a collaborative venture with Indian motorcycle manufacturer TVS Motor are fully produced, and not just assembled at TVS’ Hosur plant in Tamil Nadu, forms the basis of TVS’ Apache 310RR motorcycle.
BMW Motorrad, which has been a relatively late entrant into the high-end motorcycle segment believes that these two new products will drive demand for their brand. Speaking to The Pioneer, Vikram Pawah, President, BMW India said, “We have been doing better than we expected, because I feel there was a lot of pent-up demand. In 2017, despite starting in April and with just two or three outlets for the majority of the year we sold 252 BMW motorcycles. This year, we have sold 248 motorcycles until June alone, and we are just ramping up our sales operations. We have five dealers today and will have seven by the end of August and 10 by early-2019. And this is before we feel the impact of the 310 series in India.”
When asked whether he expected the 310 series to do well in India despite their price premium to rival products, notably the KTM Duke 390, Pawah pointed out that there are many ‘fans’ of the Motorrad brand that have been waiting a long time for these products. “This will bring in a new class of buyer, not just younger buyers which is obvious but also people who want a fun and agile motorcycle from a big brand but are scared away by big, powerful motorcycles. They want to learn on something they can manage and then maybe progress on, and we want them to start on a 310 before moving up in the BMW Motorrad family.” In addition, Pawah said that BMW will make some attractive financing offers for the products. “The idea is to bring in more buyers, so one of our finance schemes has an attractive monthly payment of just Rs 6,999 for the 310 R and Rs 7,999 for the 310 GS.”
Also speaking to The Pioneer, Dimitris Raptis, Head of Region, Asia, China and South Africa for BMW Motorrad highlighted how the motorcycle maker is aiming to hit 200,000 unit sales globally by 2020 from 164,000 in 2017 and how India will play a key role in that both from a product and geographic perspective.
