Indian Breeds KTM Duke 125 and 200, A Smashing Hit in Europe

This could be the hottest news for Indian bike manufactures! KTM Duke 125 and 200 have outsold all competitions in Europe. KTM sold 8,300 units of KTM Duke 125 and 200 in the initial three months of 2012, January to March. These are lower capacity bikes seem to be the current rage in the whole of Europe. You must be wondering why is this good news for India … So here satisfying all the queries. These two hot selling bikes are manufactured in India, by Bajaj Auto. The bikes are modeled, shaped, worked upon at Bajaj’s Chakan plant, not to mention lot of local sourcing. KTM Duke 200 is running on Indian roads, however, Duke 125 is only for export; export not just to Europe but also to many Southeast Asian markets too.

Bajaj has a stake of over 40% in KTM. As from the sales, no prizes for guessing the sales report of this partnership. Not just this, the manufacturing of these two bikes is highly profitable to KTM also because the complete process costs the company just a fraction of what it could have costed them in Europe. It’s overall profitable to KTM as these bikes extensively use the locally sourced parts. Bajaj Auto’s profits and KTM’s profit go hand-in-hand. Since Bajaj has a considerable stake in KTM, Bajaj profits if KTM profits. Thus when Bajaj manufactures such bikes and earns profit for KTM, Bajaj earns some for itself too. Another source of profit for Bajaj comes from the KTM technology.

KTM uses those high-powered technologies in its bikes that is sure to give success to the bikes; Bajaj has an access to all these KTM technologies. This could be seen clearly in Bajaj Pulsar 200 NS, a bike from Bajaj’s satchel that is identical to KTM Duke 200. With such a racy partnership between the two, India’s youth expects raunchier launches in the future. Such launches are critical not just for Indian shores, but also for European shores, since KTM tries to draw young buyers the most. Higher volume of launches from the partnership would help KTM be the market leader in Europe. Both Europe and India, in 2013, expect to get Duke model of 350 cc. Speculations are the streetfighter looks will be retained in this model. Whatever the plans or speculations, the partnership seems to be on fire!