BAL to roll out 3 lac gearless scooter by '07 end

Hyderabad, Jan 29 (UNI) After a lapse of nearly a decade, Bajaj Auto Limited (BAL), leading two-wheeler manufacturer, has forayed again into scooter business this time gearless and plans to garner about 15 per cent business in the three lakh unit Scooty segment by 2007 end.

The company has launched in January 2007 its first sub 100 cc gearless model, Kristal, which it claimed is 'India's first Intelligent Scooter', and plans to cover all the states by April this year. The four-stroke 95 cc Kristal, since its launch at Chennai early this month, is already inching to the 1000-mark with enquiries from Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu for the model.

The model launched in Andhra Pradesh, which BAL Senior Marketing Managers V Vasu and Soumyadutta Gupta, claimed gave the 'best' mileage of 50 km a litre for a Scooty category is likely to fuel the growth of the segment.

Claiming that the model was country's first ungeared scooter with front fuelling, the immediate target was to sell about 20,000 units over the next six-nine months.

A sleek and aerodynamically designed vehicle available in four attractive colours with the two-tone colour combination, 'Kristal is an outcome of consumer feedback expressing the many shortcomings of existing ungeared scooter options', and the company officials said it is targetting GenNext.

Scooter constitutes only three lakh unit of the 8.2 million (82 lakhs) two-wheeler sector. More than 7.5 million (75 lakhs) motorocycles are sold every year in India.

UNI