India’s fourth-largest motorcycle and scooter manufacturer TVS Motor has announced a widely-anticipated product development cooperation deal with BMW Motorrad.
Under the terms of this agreement, TVS and BMW Motorrad will jointly develop a series of sub-500cc motorcycles to be made in India by TVS. But each company will sell individually branded derivatives through their own distribution channels. It remains unclear whether this will result in the export of cheap Indian-sourced BMW machines to other markets, potentially including Europe.
In a statement, TVS chairman Venu Srinivasan said that bikes developed with BMW will be launched onto the Indian domestic market in 2015. Britain’s Triumph is scheduled to enter the Indian market with locally-manufactured products in the same capacity class a year earlier in 2014.
TVS has suffered a sales decline of more than six per cent in the past financial year to 31 March 2013, against a four per cent rise for the overall industry, as it loses market share to the Indian subsidiaries of Japanese rivals Honda and Yamaha.