Comments
Its bicycles can cost as much as a sedan, but that is not stopping the company from expanding its business in India.
Buoyed by its retail sales, Giant Starkenn says it is in the process of setting up a manufacturing facility in Pune.
The premium Taiwanese brand, which counts several Bollywood personalities, business honchos and politicians as its clientele, said the high import component and lack of cycling infrastructure were impediments to growth of the business in the country.
“We have acquired land in Chakan, near Pune. The plant will be operational by 2016. We intend to produce 35,000-45,000 cycles a year,” said Pravin Patil, CEO, Giant Starkenn.
Patil, however, refused to give investment details. Starkenn, a Pune-based company, has the exclusive dealership rights to sell Giant Bicycles in South Asia. The company said it is also in the process of appointing distributors for the Indian sub-continent. “We have already appointed distributors for Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. We are also looking at Maldives and Myanmar.”
High import duty
Giant sells bicycles priced between ₹25,000 and ₹11 lakh. Giant’s entry-level bicycles are made of aluminium frames, but its more expensive products have frames made of carbon fibre, the same material that is used to build aircraft.
“Currently, all our products come into the country as semi knocked-down units. The duty component is about 40 per cent,” Patil said, adding the high duty structure was a major hurdle.
The Indian bicycle industry is worth around ₹2,000 crore, and annually sells about 15.5 million units. The premium bicycling market constitutes around 5 per cent of the total bicycle market and is estimated at around ₹100 crore in India.
Speaking about the market potential, Patil said smaller cities such as Chandigarh, Shimla, Nainital, Chikmagalur and Coonoor were the rapidly growing markets in the premium and competitive bicycling sector.
Other premium made-in-India bicycle brands include Montra, sold by the Murugappa Group’s TI Cycles, and Firefox Bikes.
Patil added the company has two experience centres in Bangalore and Pune, and will open eight more such stores in Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Bangalore over the next few months. These centres have bike simulators, a bike spa, a bike library, a bike cafe and a range of Giant bicycles.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.