Bajaj Auto sold a total of 2.66 lakh vehicles in January 2010 versus 1.

32 lakh i
n the corresponding period of 2009. Two-wheeler sales in January came in at 2.33
lakh units versus 1.09 lakh units.
Commenting on the company’s sales figures, its Managing Director Rajiv Bajaj, said
, the domestic bike sales came in at 1.8 lakh versus 67,000 units last year. “The
market share too has grown from 21% to 32%.” Pulsar sales, he said were at an all-
time high of 72,000 units.
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Here is a verbatim transcript of Rajiv Bajaj s comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch

the accompanying video.
Q: Can you break this 2.66 lakh figure for us between domestic and exports and a
lso between the key two wheeler models which contributed?
A: Of the 2.66 lakh about 2.33 lakh is motorcycles of which about a hundred and
eighty thousand is domestic motorcycle as oppose to a figure of 67,000 last Janu
ary. So that is a growth more than double. The export is approximately 55,000 mo
torcycles. So 180 and 55 or 54 is about 233 that is where the motorcycle numbers
are.
The three wheelers numbers are at 33,000 and that is about evenly broken up betw
een domestic and exports. This is a growth of about 50% on last January as well.
In terms of market share, last January was about 21% motorcycle market share an
d is up to about 32% now. So it is a big growth of about 11% in market share ter
ms.
Q: How do the bike sales breakup between Pulsar and Discover?
A: Pulsar sales are actually at an all time high of almost 72,000 motorcycles. T
his is the highest ever by far. Discover continues to grow strong at about 92,00
0. Together, Pulsar and Discover are now up from 60% to 70% of our total motorcy
cle sales. So that makes the 22% EBITDA of the last two quarters possible to def
end actually.
Q: How much of this 32% market share has come courtesy your newer launch the 135
cc Pulsar? What kind of response have you seen for that product?
A: The actual sale of this product in January, which was the first month since l
aunch, was 28,000 vehicles, all sold domestically. We will continue to sell that
domestically for the next couple of months because he has an extremely good res
ponse. We are trying to push this up to about 40,000 over the next couple of mon
ths. In January and February we are constrain by capacity. Hopefully, we will ov
ercome that in March. In market share terms, 28,000 has simplistically given us
about 4% additional market share because to the best of our understanding from o
ur feel for consumer almost all of this sale is additional sales from competitio
n. There has been no cannibalization of the other Pulsar’s because those have cont
inued to grow in January.
Q: How do you expect February to be because this is the pre-budget month and thi
s time there are expectations of some excise changes in the budget? Do you expec
t February to see some kind of extra stocking because of that?
A: For Bajaj Auto, when we have done 2.33 lakh motorcycles in January, we have a
ctually sold about 5,000 less than what our dealers have retailed. So the retail
has been greater probably because consumers are anticipating a price rise by vi
rtue of the budget. I think that will happen again in February. We will de-stock
between 10,000-20,000 units in February, because our capacity is more constrain
than what it was in January. So our own anticipation is that our motorcycles sa
les will remain in this neighborhood for the month of February but dealers will
sell a larger quantity. That is why in March we are pushing very hard to get clo
ser to the 3 lakh mark in motorcycles.