India’s biggest motorcycle exporter, Bajaj Auto, is planning to concentrate much more intensely on export business through its brand partnerships, according to managing director Rajiv Bajaj. Having fended off weak domestic Indian demand through higher export revenue than its local rivals in the past year, he says this will now be a core element of Bajaj’s corporate strategy.
Although Bajaj has successfully penetrated a number of African markets, including Egypt under its own brand name, it will seek to target other high-volume emerging markets in South-East Asia’s ASEAN economic zone and Latin America in conjunction with Kawasaki.
Bajaj-manufactured Kawasaki products are currently distributed in the Philippines and Indonesia. Malaysia and Thailand, as well as Brazil, are now in its sights too within the next 12 months.
But the company’s strong relationship with KTM — based on owning a 48 per cent shareholding in the Austrian marque — will be the launch pad for an extended assault on developed markets in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia. Â
Bajaj’s Chakan plant in the India state of Maharashtra produced about one-third of some 124,000 KTM-branded motorcycles sold worldwide in 2013. Rajiv Bajaj claims this will grow to 50 per cent of a considerably larger total by 2017.
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