Chennai-based TVS Motor Company will continue to leverage the popularity of its Apache RTR brand and further work to grow this brand in the coming days, a top official said.

The Apache brand has just turned 10, selling more than 2 million units over the decade.

“For us it’s too early to think beyond RTR. The brand is bigger than the product. If you see the demographic of our country, we are a young population and growing... it’s an educated population and aspiration is on a high,” Arun Siddharth, Vice-President (Marketing-Motorcycles), TVS Motor, told BusinessLine .

He said the premium segment itself is around 15 per cent of the overall motorcycle industry (around 1.10 crore units a year) and therefore, there is huge headroom for TVS Motor in that space. Sales of Apache have grown around 20 per cent in the last financial year and the average monthly volume of the brand is 32,900 units, he said.

“The first job the RTR has to do as a brand for us is to really increase the market, it has to make the market bigger. It’s too early right now in this segment to focus on anything else than growing the segment,” Siddharth said.

Racing brand “...There will be different products and variants for sure, but the brand has the job of growing the segment as part of the overall motorcycle story,” he said. Asked what happens to the racing brand when brands like BMW Motorrad come in, in the next two months, and being manufactured at TVS’s plant at Hosur (Tamil Nadu) to boot, Siddharth said nothing actually happens to the RTR brand.

“As far as RTR is concerned, it has its own job to do. This brand (BMW) is only going to grow the market.

“The job of both the brands put together is to grow the market first. Sports bike is there for everybody, but performance brand like we have in RTR is something what we believe in,” he added.

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