Karizma discontinued? No, says Hero! It is kept limited to exports since it does not have ABS. We tell you its export numbers in this story…
Brand Karizma was first launched in 2003 and it was the only ‘big-looking bike’ of that era. Great looks, fantastic torque and a lot of new-age tech immediately brought erstwhile Hero Honda a lot of recognition in the sports motorcycle segment.
However, the makers continued with it without any upgrades for a decade before ending the partnership. Hero then decided to take matters in its hands and introduced a significant upgrade in 2014. This is the milestone which killed the brand completely! Karizma was, for the first time, called as ‘ugly’ and many users reported mechanical issues in the upgraded product.
Ever since then there have been very few takers for the motorcycle, which has also seen a lot of competition during all these years. Midway, it was discontinued from the market and rightly so. However, for some reason, someone at Hero thought of bringing it back last year, without any update at all!
The end result was that the motorcycle could only sell 76 units in all in the last financial year. Because of the recent ABS ruling, Hero considered it inappropriate to invest resources in the failed motorcycle and hence it is not selling the 223cc legend in the domestic market.
So Karizma Discontinued?
However, against everybody’s beliefs, Hero has said that Karizma has not been discontinued. In a word to Money Control, the company emailed…
Karizma is not discontinued and continues to be a part of our portfolio. At present, we are focusing on the model in our overseas markets…
But for some reason, even this logic of Hero does not hold a lot of substance. As compared to paltry 76 units in the domestic market, Hero registered only 80 unit sales in the complete export market last financial year (more details here). But then someone at Hero believes that these numbers are enough to keep the brand rolling…
