USA's UM Motorcycles eyes Indian midsize bike market

This year's festive season (August/September) in India will see the entry of another motorcycle brand, UM Motorcycles, which will target customers in the midsize motorcycle market. This segment is currently dominated by Royal Enfield. Not surprising then that UM's first motorcycle will be priced in the range of Rs 150,000-180,000. The style will be cruiser and/ or scrambler type and the bike will be powered by a 400cc engine.

The next set of UM products will be launched at the Auto Expo 2016. They will be cruisers from its Renegade series with 230cc and 300cc engine options in the Rs 120,000 to Rs 170,000 range, but they are likely be quite different from the current range.

Joji John, who heads the sales division of the joint venture between UM Motorcycles and Lohia Auto Industries, told Autocar Professional that a number of inputs have been incorporated in the product by the R&D team to make it Indian market-friendly. "The engineering of the motorcycle has been done by the R&D teams in India and USA," says John. The R&D team in India has 18-20 engineers. This team can help UM Motorcycles develop more mainstream products in the near future.

UM motorcycles will be assembled at Lohia Auto's plant in Kashipur, Uttarakhand. The plant has an installed production capacity of 100,000 motorcycles per annum. Currently, the more critical parts of the motorcycles come from UM Motorcycles USA and the rest come from China. UM is targeting sales of 2,500-3,000 motorcycles a month. The India manufacturing unit will also be an export base for UM Motorcycles. "We will export to other Asian countries; however, about 75 percent of the production will be for the domestic market," says John. That reflects the company's bullishness in the Indian market.

The American brand is looking at hitting the road with a network of 30-35 dealerships across 20-25 cities in India. The NCR region may have 4 dealerships. These dealerships will woo prospective customers with one new addition every six months. John says that he has received a fair number of enquiries from young second-generation entrepreneurs who hail from families already dealing in other automotive brands.

With the entry of UM Motorcycles, the segment of medium sized bikes is set to get a new dimension this festive season.