Katrina kaif with hrithik roshan riding royal enfield for the promotion of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
If the picture on the top – Katrina Kaif on a macho Bullet Classic 500 – comes as a surprise, you are in a hopeless minority. The picture from the recently released Bollywood movie, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, has been creating more than a few waves in cyberspace.
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The makers of the iconic Bullet series want to forget the past and have launched a mega expansion plan. Royal Enfield, the makers of the Bullet Classic, obviously doesn’t mind riding the wave, specially because the bike she is riding in the mega-budget movie has played a key role in changing the company’s fortunes after it was launched in December 2009. Earlier, Royal Enfield primarily dealt with diehard Bullet customers.
Though it is still miles behind other two-wheeler manufacturers in sales volumes, India’s oldest motorcycle manufacturer has covered a good distance. Not so long ago, it was selling just 24,000 bikes a year. This calendar, Royal Enfield has targeted production of 70,000 bikes, up from 52,000 units in 2010. A new plant with a capacity of 150,000 units will come up next year while another one (350,000 unit capacity) will take three to five years.
The main reason for Royal Enfield’s dismal track record in the past was the immense dissatisfaction among customers over late deliveries, quality and reach. The waiting period, for example, was abnormally long not because of any huge spike in demand, but because of the company’s failure to improve the supply flow. Similarly, there were recurring complaints about engine and clutch failures.
Enfield’s new CEO, Venki Padmanabhan terms the problems as “manufacturing constraints”, which would get resolved once the new plant is on stream. “The more we make, the more we seem to be falling behind”, Padmanabhan says. He is, however, happy that there is still enough demand from the market. For Classic, its top-selling model, customers are willing to wait for even six to eight months.
About quality issues, Padmanabhan says most of them have been fixed, as reflected in the growing sales. Royal Enfield has even started importing batteries from Italy, which are not only price-competitive but also help address quality issues. “We would like to leave the past behind and move on, as customers’ expectations from us have grown,” Padmanabhan says.