Bajaj Auto first to market with Avenger Street 150

In line with an earlier Autocar Professional exclusive report on Bajaj Auto readying a 150cc variant of the Avenger cruiser earlier this month, the company has today commercially launched an all-new Avenger Street 150, along with two new cosmetically upgraded variants of the existing Avenger 220 model.

Henceforth, the three new models now to be sold under the Avenger brand would be the Avenger Cruise 220, Avenger Street 220 (both are priced for Rs 84,000, ex-showroom, Delhi) and the Avenger Street 150. With a retail price tag of Rs 75,000 (ex-showroom, Delhi), the Avenger Street 150 will now not only become the most affordable cruiser motorcycle in the country but will also be the first such model exploring the latent demand for affordable cruisers at entry level segment.

Speaking to Autocar Professional on the sidelines of the new launches in Mumbai today, Eric Vas, president, motorcycle business, Bajaj Auto, said: “Yes, we will be the first-to-market with the new Avenger 150, which will certainly give us an advantage. We plan to broaden the segment (cruiser motorcycle) and create new sub-segments in it going forward.”

While the 220cc variants will continue with the same mechanical features (barring a few minor tweaks), the Avenger 150, as the senior company official says, will use the 149cc engine, which is not entirely borrowed from the Pulsar 150 DTS-i. “We have re-tuned the engine as per the cruiser requirements. Features such as air intakes are modified,” said Vas.

Interestingly, the three new models are essentially based on the same chassis with minor differences such as mountings and others. “The silencers are different in the new models,” revealed Vas.

Fillip to sales
As reported earlier, tapping into the unexplored category, the company plans to aggressively build up on its sales in the cruiser category. But the management’s monthly sales target of the new cruiser model portfolio even exceeded Autocar Professional’s earlier projections of close to 10,000 units per month.

Bajaj Auto aims to sell close to 20,000 units of the three Avenger models put together.

It can be noted that the model (Avenger 220) sold an average of close to 3,643 units per month during the Q1 and Q2 of the ongoing financial year. During the corresponding period of the last fiscal, the model sold an average of 3,766 units per month.

It is known that the company brought in the said new changes to the Avenger brand after almost 5 years. It had rolled out the Avenger 220 in 2010 when the model had borrowed its powerplant from the 220cc Pulsar 220 DTS-i. Over these many years, the Avenger 220 enjoyed being the most affordable cruiser motorcycle model in the country, and remained a popular choice among the cruiser motorcycle buyers.

A corporate presentation during the event pointed out that the Avenger brand has seen a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26 percent YoY between FY2008 to FY2015 as against the CAGR of 9 percent for the entire motorcycle industry during the same period.

According to Vas, the company has been working on the new Avenger models for more than a one year and has expanded the production capacity of the model to over 20,000 units per month at the Chakan plant. Earlier, the company had a production capacity of close to 5,000 units per month.

The company management also revealed that while the despatches of the 220cc variants have already begun, it will begin shipping the Avenger 150 to its dealers from today. Commercial sale of the three new models is slated to begin from today evening.

Not denying the plan of exporting the new Avenger cruisers, Vas added that the priority would be to address the local demand as the production capacity for local requirements is almost at par.

It is known that Bajaj Auto’s Chakan facility is currently running at 100 percent capacity.

In the context of the market outlook, Vas commented that “we have had 5 successful product launches (Pulsar RS200, Pulsar AS 150/AS 200, CT100, Platina ES and Discover 125) this year and that has helped us grow our market share across different product segments. We believe that we will do even better in the upcoming quarters (Q3 and Q4 FY2015-16)”. 

Also read: Bajaj Auto reports second highest quarterly profits in Q2 FY16