HowhavetheRoyalEnfield 650 TwinsperformedinIndiaandthe
globalmarket?
It’s been less than a year since the 650 Twins have been on the roads. For
us, it was an enormous shift from what Royal Enfield was. From old-
school singles to something really very different, yet keeping the core
philosophy of Royal Enfield. So, it’s still simple, old-school motorcycling
but totally in the next level. For us, the twins were nearly an experiment, of
course, we have high expectations from them. They have done fabulously
for us and we’ve had an amazing response — from getting Bike India’s
Two-wheeler of the Year Award to the Indian Motorcycle of the Year
Award... And, more importantly, people in India and internationally
respond to it so well. We’re making over 4,000 units (of the Twins) a
month and are sold out entirely. The biggest achievement is that it’s
created a market of its own.
Do you think the 650 Twins have revolutionized the premium
motorcyclesegmentinIndiaandcreateda newsegment
altogether?
There’s absolutely no question that it has fundamentally changed the
500-cc-plus class and the multi-cylinder motorcycle market in India.
There’s nothing like this that has happened in motorcycling in India. So
much so that even as we’re ramping up production every six to eight months,
we’re already more than half the market. All the other motorcycle
manufacturers who have been in the market for years now combined make
for about 30 to 40 per cent of the 500-cc-plus segment. These are early days
for the Continental GT and the Interceptor 650. The numbers are proof
enough, but I feel the traction is still fully to come in. People are still
warming up to it now. It’s the innovators who have bought it and have given
the thumbs-up and said that it’s a lovely bike. We have four million Royal
Enfield customers in India who are waiting for the right signal, I think.
Whatis themainreasonforthesuccessofthe 650 Twins?
We believe in entering areas and gaps of the market which have not
been fully explored. That’s where the Himalayan was before the 650
Twins. There was no purpose-built adventure tourer. From the previous
generation of the Continental GT 535 to the Himalayan, we’ve learnt
tremendously. Therefore, in the 650 Twins, the amount of engineering
effort and time that has gone in is probably 10 times that of any other
project we have done in the past. This was the first project that was done
by our new technical centre in the UK. We’ve put in a huge number of
engineering hours and testing kilometres and 10 times the number of
motorcycles we’ve tested. It’s absolutely pukka. Even Europeans or
Americans who have ridden the motorcycle have appreciated that this
motorcycle really does the job. If you look at the specification, which is
really good, the Twins are well beyond specifications. It’s the amount of
finesse we’ve put in, which one can’t realize by simply looking at the specs.
That’s what really came into the motorcycle and people are able to
perceive it. That’s the most important thing.HowhastheUKTechnicalCentreshapedupandhowis it
contributingtoRoyalEnfield’sfutureplatform?
We started the UK Technical Centre (UKTC) in Leicester about five
years ago. We started in small rented premises with just five people and I
said it’s going to be a centre of excellence for Royal Enfield. It developed
organically but quickly and today we’re about 150 people in our own
purpose-built technical centre for the last three years. It’s become the
beating heart of Royal Enfield because that’s where our core engineering
emanates from. In conjunction with the larger workforce and engineering
team that we have back in India and based on the great response we have
received from the products [650 Twins], we have now got a completely new
technical centre in Chennai which is going to be many times the size of the
UKTC. But, again, the capability is why we’ve come to the UK. In India,
some six to eight years ago, the capability for a higher speed, larger
capacity, higher finesse motorcycle was not there. The Japanese companies
were getting their higher-spec motorcycles engineered in Japan and the
Indian companies were going out [to search for engineering expertise].http://www.bikeindia.in August 2019 Bike India 87
interview Siddhartha LaL