Kawasaki Hints at Relaunching Ninja 250R
Modified On Dec 10, 2015 12:00 AM By sagar for Kawasaki Ninja 300
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The Japanese brand Kawasaki started its career in the Indian market in 80's with its long term partner, Bajaj Auto Ltd. The first product of the company was Kawasaki Bajaj KB100 bike, which was proven as a boon for both the companies and specially for Bajaj. After that, they introduced many excellent products like Boxer and Caliber which made the brand Kawasaki more popular in India. A few years ago, Kawasaki introduced its 'Ninja' brand in India with Bajaj as Kawasaki Ninja. The first bike of the series was Ninja 250R launched in 2009, which was replaced by Kawasaki Ninja 300 in April 2013, and later Kawasaki Ninja 650R was added to the portfolio.
Recently, the company has launched two high performance bikes of the series in India- Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R and ZX-14R at 15.7 lakh and 16.9 lakh, Ex-showroom, Pune, respectively. On the occasion, deputy managing director, India Kawasaki Motors, Shigeto Nishikawa, said,“We are presently studying what more brands we could launch in India. We have many brands in our portfolio and we need to see which category we could enter.”
He further added,“We have a capacity to make 5,000 units a year in India but we are operating at 1,500 units at present. We have to make further use of this facility to improve its utilization. That is why we are exploring the plan of launching more locally made products including the Ninja 250,”. This statements hints at the re-launch of Kawasaki Ninja 250R as an updated version with a lower price tag. Reason behind that is the increasing market of entry level performance bikes in India, which ranges between 2-3 lakhs, while Ninja 300 costs more than 3.5 lakh, which makes it difficult to defeat its rivals costing much lesser than this.
The new variant of Ninja 250R will be inspired from both the older Ninja 250 and the latest Ninja 300. And this bike will be priced around 2.5 lakh. The bike will compete with Honda CBR 250R priced at 1.93 lakh and Hyosung GT250R priced at 2.75 lakh (both Ex-showroom, Delhi). The bike has to compete with another upcoming rivals, and the main contestant is KTM RC250, which will be launched with a price tag below 2.5 lakh. BMW is also developing entry level performance bikes with TVS motors. All this shows that the competition will be very tough in future, and the auto makers have to plan for it now.
Ninja 300 can defeat its rivals in the field of power, performance and designing but to stay ahead in the fight of cost, Kawasaki needs a lower casting bike which comes at a price around 2.5 lakh.
Source- Business Standard
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