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K. Giriprakash

Ms Sulajja Motwani

Bangalore , May 11

TWO-wheeler maker Kinetic plans to launch the Rs-2 lakh Comet, the sports bike from South Korean Hysong Motors, in August and plans to focus more on the scooter segment this year.

"We plan to launch another Hyosung bike this year, the 250-cc Comet and this will be India's first real sports bike," Kinetic Engineering's Joint Managing Director, Ms Sullaja Firodia Motwani, told Business Line. She said during the current fiscal, Kinetic plans to launch several models of scooters from the Italjet stable .

Comet will be launched in nearly 15 cities and around 1,000 of these bikes will be imported initially. The Rs 1.5-lakh Aquila, which Kinetic imported last year, sold around 300 units but was launched only in five cities.

"We have also been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, and the current fiscal will see a very aggressive Kinetic," Ms Motwani said. She said the first of the Italjet scooters would be launched during this month. "Over the next couple of years, we will take the top spot in scooters," she said.

Ms Motwani said the company would continue to focus on the motorcycle segment with the entry level Boss expected to sell around 30,000 units during the year.

Kinetic Engineering Ltd, which mostly manufactures motorcycles, is expected to nearly double its sales to around 1.2 lakh units in the current fiscal, while Kinetic Motors, which manufactures scooters, is expected to sell around 1.4 lakh units compared to around 87,000 units last year.

She said the dip in sales of motorcycles during 2003-04 compared with the previous year was largely because the new bikes, the Boss 115, Velocity and Laser, were launched nationally only during December, 2003.

"Hence, we got the benefit of the new product portfolio only in the later half of the year. We also refrained from any year-end billing to our dealers on credit in order to control our debtor position, which is a good move for the long run," Ms Motwani said. She said the company had entered the motorcycle segment around 18 months ago. "The market for motorcycles is large but fiercely competitive and we are only a year-and-half old in this segment. Therefore building a market here will be an exercise that will require time, effort and money," she said.

Ms Motwani said with the launch of Italjet scooters, Kinetic expects the scooter segment to grow substantially. She said the drop in sales of Kinetic Honda was largely because of decrease in exports as the model was no longer popular abroad. "We expect that in coming times, our Nova will grow and the new Italjet models will take over the mantle of carrying forward Kinetic's legacy in modern scooters and give good growth in our volumes," she said.

Ms Motwani admitted that moped sales had declined because the overall market for mopeds had become stagnant. Kinetic will soon be launching a hybrid bike, Kinetic King, which is expected to boost moped sales, she said.

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