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Bajaj Auto to explore product sales in China

India's leading two and three-wheeler maker, Bajaj Auto Ltd, will send a business delegation to China later this month to explore the possibility of selling in the world's largest two-wheeler market, a company official said on Friday.

The delegation will also study the possibility of sourcing cheaper auto-parts from China.

"A few Chinese manufacturers have expressed interest in some of our products like three-wheelers and bikes like the Pulsar which is a little different from normal bikes," Sanjiv Bajaj, Bajaj Auto's vice-president for finance, told Reuters from Pune.

Bajaj Auto, located in Maharashtra, is India's largest maker of three-wheeled vehicles, widely used across the country as taxis and to move light-weight goods within cities.

The Pulsar is a 175cc motorcycle that it will launch later this year.

Bajaj Auto dominates India's scooter market and is the country's second-largest motorcycle maker. It also makes step-through motorcycles, scooterettes or smaller, lighter scooters.

Bajaj said the visit would help the company understand the products that could be sold in China and the company it could tie up with.

"For us, CBU (completely built unit) exports is not possible, since that isn't allowed. So there will have to be some limited assembly from CKD (completely knocked down) kits," he said.

China is the world's largest motorcycle market and is dominated by 100cc and 125cc bikes.

India, the world's second-largest motorcycle market, sold 2.156 million motorcycles last year, nearly 80 per cent of which were in the 100cc segment.

Bajaj had a 51 per cent share of the scooter market in 2000-01, 25.2 per cent of motorcycles, 8.3 per cent of small scooters and 78.3 per cent of three wheelers.

The company that had one of its poorest years in 2000-01 (April-March) launched a low-priced scooter model earlier this year to help revive sagging scooter sales. India's scooter sales have slid in recent years as consumer preference has shifted to motorcycles. Scooters made up about 24 per cent of the total 3.75 million two-wheeled vehicles sold in India last year, down from nearly 47 per cent in 19994-95. Motorcycles made up 57.6 per cent of the total two-wheelers sold last year.

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