Royal Enfield is Number One mid-size bike brand in UK and South Korea; Number Two in Thailand

At a time when global brands Triumph and Harley Davidson are entering the Indian market to challenge Royal Enfield's dominance, the maker of Bullet Motorcycle is aggressively expanding its share in the rival’s home turf — the UK and the US.

Royal Enfield was the largest selling mid-size motorcycle brand in the UK — the home of Triumph. One in five of every middle weight bike (250 to 750 cc) in Great Britain was an RE.

In North America, the home of Harley Davidson, the brand has already captured eight percent of the mid-size motorcycle segment last year.

With over one lakh motorcycles shipped in FY23, the company has been rising up the charts in many key international markets like South Korea, where it is Number One in its category. It is Number Two in Thailand and Number Three in Austria, France and Italy.

Speaking ahead of the new Bullet launch which will take place on Friday, B Govindarajan, CEO of Royal Enfield said, the addressable global market outside of India is over one million units and the brand has already captured eight to nine percent share of this in the last financial year.

"There is huge potential for us to grow globally. While we have been exporting vehicles over the years, the real spike in volumes has been witnessed in the last two to three years only. With the highly refined J platform which has been designed for global markets, our products are being increasingly accepted in many important markets. We are a long term aggressive company and we have set our sights on the leadership of the global mid-size motorcycle market," said Govindarajan. 

Royal Enfield has a network of over 1,000 stores globally and it assembles motorcycles in five different bases, namely Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Thailand and Nepal. Very soon, the company will be adding another assembly plant in Bangladesh.

Govindarajan says the company has been focused on establishing a base in many of these markets over several years and has delivered on a premium motorcycling ownership experience, right from communication and distribution to events that it does with customers. This has started to pay off for the brand.

Yet the CEO of Royal Enfield clarifies that the company will be very picky in choosing markets that it wants to capture.

“There is potential to grow in both developing markets like India – i.e. Thailand, Brazil and some key Latin American markets, wherein millions of customers will upgrade from commuter bikes into our segment, whereas we are seen as a credible alternative in the evolved markets of Europe, US, Japan, Korea for people to opt for more accessible mid-size bikes,” added Govindarajan.