Rajiv Bajaj has been universally lauded for his ‘vision’ in resurrecting Bajaj Auto. The story is well-known and has been documented before, but this is a short recap.
In the early part of the 2000’s; Bajaj Auto, a symbol of India’s failed socialist ‘license Raj’ whose scooters had provided wheels to India for over three decades were losing out to motorcycles, primarily manufactured by Delhi-based Hero Honda. Rajiv Bajaj was brought in by his father Rahul Bajaj and set about transforming the Pune-based company in more ways than one.
He brought in new talent particularly in engineering, took on the unions, started international ventures and revamped the product line-up. Innovations such as the Double Twin Spark Injection (DTSi) engine which was mated to the Pulsar motorcycle made Bajaj Auto cool again (the grungy new ‘Hamara Bajaj’ advertisement by lintas helped as well), particularly among a generation of younger Indians who had grown up in post-liberalisation Indiia. Bajaj was on a high, by the mid-2000’s despite Hero Honda taking a considerable lead in sales, Bajaj Auto was the ‘cool’ company, and aided by solid profit margins itwas not just cool among consumers but also on the stockmarkets.
In early 2006, Bajaj Auto hired a cruise-liner to sail between Mumbai and Goa for their annual dealer conference, and some journalists were invited on board as well. Rajiv Bajaj was at his bombastic best when addressing his dealers, promising that Bajaj would again be the leader in sales. The scooter era was well and truly over, Bajaj produced minimal amounts of Chetak scooters at their Pune plant, and after some product failures, notably the Bajaj Splash whose brand ambassador was a very young Priety Zinta. However, even by then there was a perceptible shift in buying preferences. The scooter, specifically the automatic transmission scooter was indeed making a splashin India. This was due to Honda’s solo venture in India, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter limited.
Starting in 2001, when the relationship between Hero and Honda intheir joint-venture was at a nadir, the company had stuck to producing scooters since it entered. A few years previously, Honda had broken-off with Kinetic as that joint-venture was not producing the sales the Japanese company expected.
Starting slow with just 55,000 scooters sold in 2001-02; by 2005-06 the company sold 499,900 scooters, less than ten per cent of the overall two-wheeler market evenback then. However, by then Honda had also shared scooter technology with their then partner Hero, who named their scooter the ‘Pleasure’ and using the rising star of Bollywood (back then) Priyanka Chopra as a brand ambassador started do well. The Chennai-based TVS Motors, which had been producing the automatic ‘Scooty’