Bajaj Alters 125cc Platform Strategy

The second largest two wheeler manufacturer in the country, in a bid to consolidate its position in the market has redrawn its strategy for the 125cc platform. There will be three platform levels in place. The top rung occupied by the Discover, Pulsar and Avenger models. The middle tier being occupied by the XCD platform, while the lowest by the Platina.

There are going to be new launches in the months of September, November and in February. The extravagantly styled XCD Sprint will be the last of these launches, which means it would be the last to come out in February.

Now the interesting bit of news is that a 125cc version of the Platina will be rolled out. The reason behind this, according to Rajiv Bajaj is that they "…had earlier kicked off with the Boxer and CT 100 in this segment but they were easy to imitate and competing models quickly joined the arena. Even when we added interesting features to the Platina, it was only a matter of months before competition followed suit”.

But with the 125cc version of Platina he says, "An electric start 125cc would positively take two years to imitate quite unlike the past where we saw competing models emerge in six months".

The thing is that there are already 125cc models from various manufacturers in the market and bringing out a competing model shouldn’t be as hard, unless the bigger Platina is as fuel efficient as the 100cc variant and only slightly higher priced. Bajaj have a knack of pricing their motorcycles competitively and till now no other manufacturer has been able to match the price - efficiency combo of the XCD either.

But one must remember that they used to have a 125cc variant of the Platina before the Platina. Wind 125 anyone?