Bajaj Auto To Start Exporting Bikes And Three-Wheelers To Thailand

Two-wheeler major Bajaj Auto plans to begin shipments of its bikes and three-wheelers to Thailand in next couple of months as part of its plans to consolidate its position in the Southeast Asian market. The two-wheeler major currently exports to various markets in the region including the Philippines, Singapore and Myanmar. The Pune-headquartered firm has also started exporting KTM bikes to the Malaysian market recently. "South East Asia is a big market for two-wheelers. We are getting good response from Malaysia and now in couple of months will also start exporting to Thailand," Bajaj Auto President (Business Development and Assurance) S Ravikumar told PTI.

The company will be exporting both bikes and three-wheelers to the Thailand market, he added. The company, which exports to various regions including Africa and Latin America, is witnessing robust growth in new markets like Malaysia where it recently started exporting units.

"Efforts on entering new markets have paid dividends and dependence of the company on traditional high volume countries like Sri Lanka, Nigeria, etc has reduced," Ravikumar said.

For the quarter ended June 30, the company sold 4,09,525 units in the export markets. "It is after five quarters that we have crossed 4 lakh unit sales mark in export markets. New markets like Malaysia are maturing now and have given decent results," Ravikumar said.

Elaborating on various markets, he said that sales have picked up in Nigeria, a big market in African continent. "Besides, Sri Lanka continues to be down, while in markets like Colombia and Philippines we are holding on," Ravikumar said.

The company remains "cautiously optimistic" about export markets going ahead, he added. Commenting on the domestic sales, he said the market would continue to see "turbulence" in August with GST implementation going on and the market would only stabilise in September.

When asked about new launches, Ravikumar said the company's new product pipeline remained robust with plans to introduce many models in remaining quarters of the fiscal. He, however, declined to share specific details about the new product launches.

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