‘It’s very important to build the brand as well as the business’

Bajaj Auto had a massive presence at this year’s festival and Rakesh Sharma, Director, Bajaj Auto, was in attendance too. We had a wide-ranging conversation with him which provided some fascinating insight. Here’s what he had to say

So, Rakesh, first time at a biking festival for you?

(Laughs) Yes, I got pulled in. That’s true, in India, I would say, yes, first time.

What is your reaction to this bike festival?

I think it’s marvellous. Having attended a few of these in Mexico and Indonesia, I have always wondered... I think the people over here are ready, but we get overwhelmed by the sheer size of our country. But in terms of the aficionados, they are there. And we are just not able to give them this outlet. Because the magnitude in India is so big and I’ve always wondered when I’m in Indonesia and I’m seeing all these bikers and the way they take up enduros and all that… So, I think that what the festival is doing is a marvellous thing. I just hope that we can increase its locations. And I felt that it’s very important for Bajaj, as KTM or as Husqvarna now, to participate in these. Not just from the point of view of advancing our business, but from the point of view of advancing sporty biking in the country. And I know you’re a big advocate of this as well.

Bajaj do not have much of a history in motor sport. With KTM, though, there is a strong racing lineage. What are your thoughts on that?

You see, it was like this. When I approached the KTM business, I said if we are going to be true to the brand, then we’ve got to do the things that the brand is doing, what the brand stands for. I think there was a phasing involved in this, because we don’t also want to be a real super premium bike brand having six stores and then just sticking to that. So, the timing was right, having expanded the franchise to 350 towns, which no other premium biking brand can claim. So, now the time was right to get in and start pushing the boundaries and start working on adventure sport and connect with the enthusiasts, etc. I think it’s very important to build the brand as well as the business. This is not about one year or two years, this is about five years and 10 years. It’s not as if the market will suddenly be ready on its own and you’ll come and start selling the 790s. You really have to invest in the market.

Now with Husqvarna coming in, a sporty brand but a little more sedate than KTM and more rounded, KTM without the madness, is that another avenue to target another segment?

You’re absolutely right, because it gives a body to the effort because then you’re covering a certain spectrum, you’re also covering people who have got the money that don’t want to be in that madness, who don’t want to be doing a wheelie at the traffic light. They’ve been there and done that and now they don’t want to compromise on the features or the performance. So, it’s a whole new segment. And, as you know, all this also has to be done within the framework of business.

So, what is your plan for the future of this brand?

I would say that the foremost and the biggest challenge and opportunity before us is to take our dealers — it’s a huge number in 350 towns — and reorient them. These are our selling arms; they are our ambassadors. They will go where the easy business is: 125 cc, 200 cc, 250 cc. We want to change that into nodes of advocacy and say that you’ve got to go out there and create a market for Husky and create a market for the 390, the 790, and it’s in your interest and it will ultimately be a very synergistic thing. So, this is a first challenge. As we do this, the kind of stuff which we have been doing in stage one of our evolution, which was the Orange Rides and Orange Days, we have to transform, without losing their touch with the masses, into a class where we improve our activation outreach and make it a little more complex, a little more enriched. And the third is that we have to consciously flow some of these things into the brand. Because the danger is that having sold the 125s, the 200s, and 250s in a large number, the vast majority shouldn’t feel that that’s what KTM are. KTM are something else. Now the time has come to start engineering that shift.

So, shall we see more and more bigger bikes coming from the stable?

I think selectively, yes. Because it helps to build the brand. If you just keep talking and showing some foreign videos, that doesn’t help. What helps is the dealers talking about it, our activation and outreach going into a different class — racing, adventure, that kind of stuff. And what helps is seeing these bikes on the road and using them in our brand stories.

Does that mean we’ll see bigger bikes being assembled and rolled out of Chakan too?

We are studying that, but the problem with this is that we have to be careful about how much of a pool of demand we have. The easiest thing, frankly speaking, is having a very good engagement in the manufacturing side and R&D side with the KTM folk, that’s the easy part to be able to do it over here. The difficult part is customer support. What happens is when a guy buys a 790 or, let’s say, a 1290 and there is a slight issue, they want immediate resolution. They can’t wait for three weeks or five weeks. So, the whole customer support machinery, postsales, is a very big undertaking if it’s just a few bikes. Otherwise, what will happen is it will end up creating a bad image and for what?

Now with an adventure bike coming in, will you organize adventure sport events for the owners and things like that?

Yes. Actually, this is an area I have been talking to Sumeet about and saying that now we have got to lift this whole game and use some imagination. We have not finely crafted it exactly but it is an area of active discussion. This whole journey from 2012 to now has given us the confidence. It is a tremendous response — we sold upwards of 8-9,000 units of KTM in Diwali time. And with the finance becoming more and more easily accessible, we’re coming out with other things.

‘The biggest challenge and opportunity before us is to take our dealers — it’s a huge number in 350 towns — and reorient them’

First off, how do you pronounce your brand-name?

Ranjita Ravi (RR): ORHA. The “x” is silent. This is what happens when you let the engineers do the naming!

So, Mantis is the product, right?

RR: That is right. Mantis is the new fully electric naked sports motorcycle and it will be India’s first naked sports EV.

There are bikes in a similar role on the market, so that’s an interesting space you’re occupying.

Prajwal Sabnis (PS): We think the electric market is big enough; so, at this moment, the electric vehicle market is not about competition but about putting nice vehicles out. Let’s start showing people what the electric vehicles can do and then we can decide on whether to compete, collaborate or just build a community of EVs. Right now, for us, it’s about trying to put out a good product.

RR: The problem has been that electric vehicles have always been so underpowered with small motors and a really poor range. The experience is really bad for someone who wants to ride an EV. The main reason we came up with the Mantis was to have an EV that we would enjoy riding. Our whole team consists of bikers. It’s kind of a recruitment criterion at our company. If you say that there is a wobble in the handlebar, how do you explain that to someone who is not a biker, right? Our goal is to build bikes for bikers. It has to stay true to the spirit of motorcycling. The fact that it’s electric is just a plus.

We have explored a few electric bikes since they are coming to India. For example, we got to ride the LiveWire when they organized the press ride in the US. That was an eye-opening experience because you could see that electric was exciting, not limited by range and battery constraints.

PS: We want to change that as well. If you look at the LiveWire, these are really big bikes. You look at that and you want to get that here. But when we realized how expensive it was, it was a nightmare we didn’t want to go through. Especially when we are all young individuals who are at the beginning of their career, we want to really explore. There are so many other factors that go into it when you’re clear about riding in India. It’s not about having a big motorcycle, but about the feel that you get while riding it. The freedom and pleasure of riding is what we wanted to get out of the Mantis.

Can you give us a benchmark for any internal combustion motorcycle that could occupy a similar place as the Mantis? Just so that we have a perspective on that.

PS: I think a good 250-cc to 300-cc motorcycle from any international market is a good perspective in terms of styling, performance, and handling that we were trying to achieve. As an EV company, we refrain from focusing on big numbers, except for the range. That was the one thing hitting us really hard. That was one area

on which we focused a lot. If you look at the battery packs that we are going to announce, our motorcycle will have two to four times the battery capacity of any Indian two-wheeler EV. How do you make that accessible and easily usable for an owner in the Indian market? You have a massive battery pack but you live on the 15th floor of an apartment in a city like Mumbai where it’s not easy to get a charging point in the basement. Those are the kind of things that we are focusing on.

Range anxiety is something we worry about a lot. What would you be doing to combat this problem?

RR: Right now, there are around 60,000 petrol pumps in India. It took us a while to get here. Before that, people used jerry cans for petrol. Imagine a battery to be a jerry can of fuel. That is exactly what it is. The reason we have modular battery packs is that they can be stacked and we already have six modules that can be stacked. We have put in 200 km of range. This is the actual range in actual riding conditions in India. That makes it two to four times the range of other EVs. Our battery packs have been validated on five different automotive platforms. That is something we will talk more about during our commercial launch.

PS: Just to add to that perspective, we hear a lot about standardization of batteries. I think trying to enforce a standard is a very difficult point to start with. An easier way would be to start putting vehicles out which use them and see where things go. That is what happened with the micro USB or USB Type-C, etc. So, the ports and connection and adaptability will happen over time. We have been focusing on having good battery packs which will actually function in the Indian scenario. There have been many complaints about battery packs that have been imported which fail in Indian conditions and a whole lot of other things going on. We have tried really hard to make sure that does not affect our product.

That was going to be one of my next questions. We have heard that after having a battery pack for about five to six years, it starts to deteriorate just like a phone battery and does not guarantee the same range any more. Do you have any safeguards to protect a customer from that?

PS: That is a tricky question. Let me frame it differently. When you buy a new motorcycle, all the parts and everything is brand-new and you also get a good mileage at the beginning, but as you keep using it, the mileage does vary. In case of a battery, that tends to change a lot. What we have done to safeguard customers is that we work with only international and reputed brands of manufacturers. The cells we use come from one of the top four players in the market. That gives us some amount of protection against premature death of the batteries. To give a straightforward answer will be difficult, because there are a whole lot of factors to consider; factors such as who is riding it and how they are riding it, which matter to the bike.

RR: It is very similar to having a wellmaintained motorcycle of 25 years or more. If you take care of the battery pack, it is guaranteed to last longer. Some things we have built in terms of electronics, safety features, charging, etc, at total life help you manage the battery for longer. Keeping the battery in good health is important. The modularity gives us a lot of options.

Coming to the name of the bike, all I know about the Mantis is that it’s a character from the Kung Fu Panda movies. Where does the inspiration for the name “Mantis” come from? RR: We are very inspired by nature and by ambush predators. If you look at some electric vehicles, they are very silent but fast. So, the only animals that fit with this bike are ambush predators that are really silent but could sneak up really fast on you. The Mantis is an ambush predator. The first vehicle we built was actually a trike that had two wheels at the front and one at the rear. In this creation, all the wheels of the trike moved freely. When you looked at that, it resembled a Mantis or the pincers of a Mantis. We liked how that looked and we liked the whole ambush predator theme. Even the next vehicles we come out with are going to be based on the theme of silent and fast predators.

Speaking about new vehicles, could you tell us something about what’s in the pipeline?

RR: At the next India Bike Week. For us, this IBW is all about the Mantis, but we will be back soon.

When will the bike go on sale in the market?

RR: We are in the process of certification. Some of the parts on the Mantis still require certification. But we are targeting a commercial launch by the middle of next year [2020]. We can announce a firm date when we have everything in the certification process sorted out. The most important reason that were at the India Bike Week is that a lot of our team members are bikers at heart. They have always been on the other side of the stall. For them to be on this side today and get a chance to show the crowd what they have built is super important. The other reason we’re here is that we find all kinds of bikers and people passionate about motorcycling. We want their feedback and would be happy to know what they think of our product.

‘Right now, there are around 60,000 petrol pumps in India. It took us a while to get here. Before that, people used jerry cans for petrol. Imagine a battery to be a jerry can of fuel’