Royal Enfield Motors, the manufacturer of 350-500 cc motorcycles including the cult brand Bullet, which has global aspirations is strengthening its research and development (R&D) focus to take on international competition.

The company has also announced plans to expand its product range to cover the entire mid-size segment from 250-750 cc motorcycles.

Product design

Over the last couple of years the Eicher Motors group company has enhanced its engineering and product design capabilities. Eicher Motor’s R&D investment has tripled to about ₹90 crore (which accounted for about 1.5 per cent of the revenues) in 2015-16. A significant portion of this R&D is devoted to acquire a design edge for Royal Enfield.

“For 2016-17, Royal Enfield has announced an investment of ₹600 crore in building strong foundations across all areas of its business. A part of this will be for setting up two technical centres in Leicestershire (UK) and Chennai. We already have a strong team in place at both these tech centres and a strategic direction is set,” Rudratej Singh, President, Royal Enfield, told BusinessLine . Both centres will collaborate on developing products and platforms.

The UK technology centre will be operational by the latter half of this fiscal, while the Chennai centre will be ready by the next fiscal.

Last year, the company acquired Harris Performance based in the UK, a motorcycle engineering and design firm. The UK firm played a crucial role in design and development of the recently launched 400-cc adventure bike Himalayan.

Harris Performance has worked with several other motorcycle brands in the past, including Royal Enfield.

Now, the team in the UK firm is developing an all-new product platform to serve the mid-size super bike market (250 cc-750 cc) and it is expected to be rolled out by the next fiscal.

“While we continue to work relentlessly on demand generation, we have also taken significant steps to reinforce our product development capabilities at Royal Enfield. In UK, we already have a team of more than 50 engineers with deep experience in design and development of motorcycles,” Siddhartha Lal, Managing Director & CEO, Eicher Motors, said in company’s latest annual report.

Global footprint

Over the past couple of years, the company has expanded its global footprint with exclusive stores in cities such as London, Paris, Madrid, Bogota, Medellin and Dubai. It also opened its first exclusive store in Jakarta in January and in Bangkok in February. The company sees favourable market growth in Indonesia and Thailand, which are among the largest two wheeler markets in the world.

Direct distribution

Royal Enfield has also opened its first direct distribution subsidiary in Milwaukee, North America. So, this will be its first ever marketing company outside of India where it has now about 15 people focusing on dealer development, after sales and marketing communication.

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