Bajaj is believed to have made contract manufacturing arrangements with firms in China and is readying to sell this low-cost bike (speculated as steel) in China, Nigeria and some of its other export markets. Steel is expected to be priced around Rs25000. Bajaj has also decided to create a new brand name for this product, dissociating it from the ‘Bajaj’ brand name altogether. As the ‘Bajaj’ brand name has been associated with technological superiority and the company perhaps wants to keep a product which uses Chinese components (believed by some to be inferior in quality) out of the Bajaj brand umbrella.
The new brand identity for the low-cost bike could be revealed soon. But why is Bajaj ready to peddle low-cost bikes, especially with a ‘Made in China’ label? Bajaj has suffered over the last few months due to lack of a “strong product line-up with only one product in the entry-level, 100cc-125cc segment. Though domestic sales for Bajaj have not been encouraging, exports have shown healthy growth.
Bajaj has set itself an ambitious target of capturing 30-40% share of the 13 million Chinese bikes currently sold across the globe. But as any low-cost product which Bajaj develops for export markets is more probable to hit the domestic market as well.