Royal Enfield, the oldest motorcycle company in continuous existence, announced on October 25, 2012 to reduce the waiting period for its motorcycles, once its second manufacturing facility at Oragadam near Chennai starts operation by the Q1 of 2013-14 fiscal. At present, the final delivery of Enfield bikes requires six to eight months after completing the booking procedures.
The announcement came through Venki Padmanabhan, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Royal Enfield, who was addressing media at the launch of company's brand new product - Thunderbird 500 cc and 350 cc in Bangalore. According to Padmanabhan, Royal Enfield's Oragadam manufacturing unit is expected to exceed a yield of over 1.5 lac units per annum by March 2013. Commenting on the company's expected growth and sales projection for the ongoing 2012-13 fiscal, Padmanabhan, said, "So far we have sold 75,000 bikes and this fiscal we hope to cross one lac sales figures."
Padmanabhan shed some lights on the Royal Enfield's export businesses as well and revealed that currently, the US motorcycle market is most significant and biggest in terms of units exported. Further, the company has presence in several European and Latin American markets along with that of Australia.
Shaji Koshy, Senior Vice President (VP), Sales and Marketing, Royal Enfield informed the media that company is receiving some great demand and interest from the Karnataka market, for its products. Koshy affirmed that the sales of Royal Enfield soared by almost 80 per cent in 2011 as against the sales recorded in 2010.
Expressing his opinion about the company's recent surge in sales, Koshy said, "This year we have already registered a growth of 70 per cent over the average monthly sales volume of 2011. To keep up with the growing demand we have expanded our footprints aggressively and we have 16 dealers across Karnataka."
Interestingly, the Royal Enfield CEO further declared that the company has ventured into a new domain - bike accessories. Accordingly, the legendary maker of the iconic 'Bullet' cruiser bike will now offer the Indian audience with a gamut of first-in-class biking gadgets and apparel, such as nylon and leather jackets along with helmets and leather gloves amongst others.
Reportedly, 500 cc and 350 cc variants of the 2012 Royal Enfield Thunderbird cruiser come with price tags of Rs. 1,86,622 and Rs. 1,46,466, respectively (on road Bangalore prices).
Evidently, the first model of Thunderbird was introduced in market in 2002 and the company manages sales close to 1,000 units of the 350 cc model.
