Pune based Bajaj Auto has sold a whooping 5 lakh units of its recently launched 100cc Discover DTS-Si in just 225 days of its life in the market. After declaring an exit from the 100cc segment, Bajaj relaunched a 100cc bike in July last year and named it as one of their dominant brands, the Discover. Results have been ominous and many rival companies might be feeling the heat.
According to the press release, this new offering in the 100cc has become the highest selling brand in West Bengal and the North-Eastern region of the country in the overall two wheeler category. The response has been so overwhelming that maximum dealerships were running out of stock in the last few weeks and for the same reason Bajaj has ramped up the monthly production to 1 lakh units from the earlier 75000 units they produced. Bajaj also did not fall back on pointing out that because of the magnanimous response to both Pulsar 135LS and Discover DTS Si, company’s market share has risen to 27.3 percent in February 2010.
Interesting Crunches:
On an average this figure turns out to be mind boggling sales of 2222 Discovers per day. We gathered some data for the Worlds single largest selling model Hero Honda Splendor and what we came out were some surprise results.
Splendor was launched by Hero Honda in 1994 and very recently in November 2009, company celebrated the 11 millionth production landmark. So in a span of 16 years (5840 days) Hero Honda sold 11 million Splendors which turns out to be approximately 1900 Splendors per day slightly lesser than Discovers current sales. After reading these status Bajaj boffins would be on their highchairs and they deserve to do so (for the time being atleast).
However, there are many more points which we are intentionally neglecting so as to keep our talks confined to the topic in hand. We all might have heard Bajaj’s commuter bikes creating furors at their initial phases of launch but disappear in the longer runs. Many people are skeptic about this bike as well. But there is a slight difference here, the ‘Discover’ brand! All the CD series from Hero Honda shares the same engine and characteristics as Splendors but they are not as successful as the mighty Splendor because of the cult brand status ‘Splendor’ has created in aam janta’s minds. Similarly many of Bajajs offerings in the commuter segment created ripples initially like the XCD, CT100 and Platina but they failed to sustain the momentum. But we expect this bike to maintain good numbers as Discover brand commands good notion with people’s sentiments. However, there is a lot which Bajaj needs to ensure to keep the sales momentum ticking for this bike as arch rival Honda has come up with yet another ‘Splendor in the making 100cc segment bike, the CB Twister!
– Saad Khan
Reference: xBhp.com
