Classic Legends has a mammoth task ahead, and it is in desperate need to crack the Indian consumer. Focusing on a smaller but premium biking audience, it has now readied a war chest of Rs1,000 crore
“When you ride the Jawa, you're telling people that you refuse to be suppressed, you refuse to be oppressed,”, Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., said during a launch event of the Yezdi Jawa Motorcycles Jawa 42 FJ motorbike in Mumbai, India, on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024. Image: Indranil Aditya/Bloomberg via Getty Images
At a packed studio at the famed Mehboob Studios in Mumbai, last week, Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra group, spoke about how old, resurrected brands continue to have new stories to tell, albeit for a different generation.
Of course, Mahindra knows that better than anybody else. The Thar, an SUV manufactured by Mahindra, for instance, traces its origin and design to the iconic CJ series of Jeep that the automaker has been manufacturing since 1945. The new generation Thar, when launched in 2021, went on to redraw Mahindra’s fortunes for good, propelling the automaker to the country’s fourth largest, close on the heels of Tata Motors. Today, the SUV has achieved something of a cult status, which prompted Mahindra to build a next-generation variant before launching it in August.
Still, Mahindra’s reference wasn’t about the Thar or the group’s remarkable comeback in the automotive sector. Instead, it was about Classic Legends, a company that the group has set up to focus on a niche biking segment, bringing back the likes of Jawa, Yezdi and BSA into the Indian market, after they folded up many decades ago.
“We stand before you, running a marathon,” Mahindra told a room of media persons. “We may fall, we may slip. But we will rise, and we'll keep on running. We’re running a marathon.” That sentimental appeal and a war cry of sorts from the 69-year-old with an enormous following on social media may be one thing, but Mahindra knows that Classic Legends has a mammoth task ahead, and it is in desperate need to crack the Indian consumer, who hasn’t been entirely convinced by the products from the bike maker’s stable.
In the world’s largest two-wheeler market, Classic Legends corners about 0.19 percent of the market, selling only a little over 2,000 vehicles a month. That number pales in comparison to the likes of relative newcomers such as Ola Electric which retails over 27,000 units a month, while Royal Enfield, Classic Legends’ closest competitor, sells as many as 25 times more vehicles a month—in August, for instance, Royal Enfield sold 54,810 units, with Hero MotoCorp, as the largest two-wheeler maker, at 258,516 units, according to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association.