Eighteen months after it launched the Austrian sportsbike KTM 200 Duke in India, Bajaj Auto has launched the KTM 390 Duke.
Conceived and developed in India, the new bike, which is being produced at Bajaj Auto’s Chakan plant in Maharashtra, is highly localised.
The 390 Duke is being offered at an introductory price of Rs 1.8 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).
It will be sold through 71 dealerships – former Pro-biking outlets now re-branded as KTM showrooms. Exports for distribution in Europe and the US have also started.
Bajaj Auto owns a 48 per cent stake in KTM.
Observing that the latest product was in a segment that did not exist today, Rajiv Bajaj, MD, Bajaj Auto, said the significant synergy between KTM products and the Bajaj Pulsar brought economies of scale and gave the Duke a significant cost advantage.
The medium-term target is to produce a total of 200,000 KTM bikes by 2017. “Half of these will be made in Austria and the other half will be made and distributed from Chakan,” he added.
The Chakan plant, where Bajaj Auto makes its range of premium bikes, has a current installed capacity of 1.2 million units a year.
Since the KTM 200 Duke came to India, Bajaj Auto has sold 11,000 units of the brand in the domestic market and exported around 25,000 bikes.
Fitted with a 373 cc, single cylinder, 4-stroke, liquid cooled engine, the 390 Duke has a 6-speed transmission and 43.5 PS power @ 9000 rpm.
The chassis features include a steel trellis frame, dry weight of 145 kg and an unloaded seat height of 800 mm.
Workmen go on strike
Around 900 workers belonging to the workers’ union at motorcycle major Bajaj Auto’s Chakan plant have stopped work from this morning.
The workers say the strike is indefinite and will continue until their demands are met.
The Chakan plant is where Bajaj Auto makes its range of premium bikes like the Pulsar and KTM Duke, including the KTM 390 Duke launched earlier today. The total blue collar strength at Chakan stands at around 1,900, nearly 1,000 of which are on contract, a worker said.
According to Balu Thorve, General Secretary of the Vishwa Kalyan Kamgar Sanghatana (VKKS), the Union had sent a notice to the management 15 days ago stating their intention to go on strike.
Their demands included reinstatement of 13 suspended workers and also that they should be given the option of subscribing to 500 equity shares of the company at the token price of Re 1 per share.
On the BSE, Bajaj Auto’s share stood at Rs 1,799 today, and had touched a 52-week high of Rs 2228.95 this January.
In a filing to the BSE, Bajaj Auto has said that the company had received a notice from the workmen’s Union at their Chakan plant saying that they propose to call for a stoppage of work by all the workmen employed in Chakan plant from the morning shift of June 28.
The reason given was that the management had refused to concede their demand of discounted shares.
The workmen have, however, stopped coming to the Chakan plant from June 25, 2013, itself, without assigning any reason for this stoppage, the filing said.
Rajiv Bajaj, MD, Bajaj Auto did not reply to an e-mail on the subject.