Classic Legends, which makes BSA, Jawa and Yezdi motorcycles, has just rolled out the 2025 edition of the Yezdi Adventure at ₹2.15 lakh at the showroom. While the price point remains the same as the older model, the new product now has traction control, adjustable windshield and instrument cluster, new twin-LED headlamp and tail lamp clusters, a new frame and a bunch of cosmetic additions such as new colour schemes. t2oS spoke with Jawa Yezdi Motorcycles co-founder Anupam Thareja about it and how the company is planning to go forward. Excerpts.
Q. The Yezdi Adventure 2025 edition is out. You had an updated version last year. Why did you want to make further changes and what exactly do you intend to achieve by it?
“There is no end to perfection, no saturation of design.” That’s what (Salvatore) Ferragamo said. So, we have to keep on it. If you look at it, last year we perfected the engine. Everybody just loved it. Traction control is something which I always wanted to put, but it kept on going up in price. Motorcycles that have it are all above ₹3 lakh, ₹5 lakh, ₹7 lakh. We worked very hard in getting that done.
We are not a listed company. We are made by bikers. We are bikers. We are very anal about it. We take feedback very seriously. Actually, when I ride the bike on the highways, the slick highways of India, traction control becomes important. Switchable traction because this has to also go up. Switchable ABS. So these are not cosmetic. These are not marketing tools. These are genuine needs of the bike.
And I think it’s about time that we keep up. This segment, we have been leading it. We have been pushing everybody. We came in, everybody had to match us. They couldn’t match the price. We are at the same price point that we are. The competition has moved ₹80,000 up and ₹40,000 down. Either they have to drop the specs and engines or they have to, if they match us, go ₹80,000-90,000 up. So, this is who we are.
Q. You have ridden into a segment which has got a very strong player already in the form of the Royal Enfield Himalayan. So how exactly do you want to match or surpass it?
There is no need. See, this is a segment where we will go segment by segment. Classic has three, four, five per cent of the market depending on how you cut it. So, anyway 95 per cent people are rejecting it. It’s a very sharp segment. They (95 per cent) buy every other bike but this. It’s selective, you’re selecting this segment. Within this you’re divided. You have scrams, you have bobbers, adventures, classics, you have roadsters. So it’s not a uniform, homogenous segment.
Because it’s a special segment, people are very special about that. What do you do? You go segment by segment and you keep winning products. That’s the only way. And you grow that segment as a leader or as a relevant player. Then overall, you become something. So that’s how you proliferate your products across this category. It’s a very difficult category because each bike is different. My Adventure has nothing to do with my Roadster. What is the common? Speedometer, look, geometry, weight, wheelbase, wheel sizes, nothing.
So, to say that we are in that 5 per cent, all of us are making classic motorcycles, but what we are doing, we are making three brands globally with five or six segments within. Which others took 50 years, 90 years, 80 years, 100 years, what have we done? (In) four years, three years, that’s all.
The engine remains a 334cc single-cylinder, liquid-cooled unit that makes 29.6ps of peak power and 29.9Nm of peak torque
We came, disrupted the sector and we are disrupting ourselves. My competition is me, I don’t care about any other competition. Is this a better bike than last year in terms of looks? You tell me. Traction control is relevant for this segment? You tell me. Reducing weight by adding features is a relevant thing? You tell me. So my competition is myself. I have to have a better version of myself tomorrow.
Q. When you were launching the bike, you talked about adventure bikes getting heavier and fatter and coming with bigger engines and so on. So, you’re implying that the Adventure returns to the roots. How do you do that?
That is what classics are. Simpler times, clean bikes, relevant technology. Most of the bikes we are talking about, I have them. Gorgeous bikes.
Great ultimate tourers. India mein chalake dekho, ekbar girega toh uthega bhi nahin. When you’re riding on Alpine passes or African deserts, please ride that. But in India, when you are maneuvering through traffic and crossings and roads and potholes and highways, this is a purpose-built, perfect spec bike for this country.
Q. In terms of growing volumes, how much of that is the focus and how do you expect to do that in the days to come? I believe you have a couple of more bikes lined up to launch this year...
I don’t think we’re going to explore more segments or brands or things. We are going to launch the Gen 3 products everywhere to perfectly get that price positioning right. Let’s talk volumes since volume is important. There are only three ways in which you can increase volumes — product, pricing, distribution. You have to disrupt one thing. A new product which creates excitement, people like it, they buy it if it’s priced right, because today better adventures are available in terms of longer mileage and ultimate tourers, yes, at ₹20 lakh. But you have to decide which segment you want.
So what did we do? We solved the product and pricing conundrum. By every launch we solve it. (It was) ₹2,14,900 previous generation, new generation ₹2,14,900. Looks drop-dead, product fully loaded, so product pricing solved. He’s (Sharad Agarwal, chief business officer) solving the distribution thing. He’s going to take this dealership network to 500 before Diwali.... Add to all this our legendary brand, Jawa, Yezdi, stories after stories. Which other brands have this story?
So you have the stories, you have the products, you have the three brands, you have the global play. While I am launching, he (Sharad Agarwal) is doing 500, he is also simultaneously launching in 27 countries. Europe, Italy, Spain, France. Boman (Irani, co-founder of Classic Legends), who was there, he just came back to talk about Brazil, Mexico, Argentina. He just came from Prague. On one hand we just opened New Zealand, Australia, Japan.
So we are opening the developed markets with BSA, the (former) Eastern Bloc with Jawa, and India with Yezdi. That’s the strategy.
The Classic Legends team (l-r) Sharad Agarwal, chief business officer; Lalit Verma, COO; Boman Irani, co-founder, Anupam Thareja, co-founder, founder; Pradeep Deulkar, lead deisgner; Susheel Sinha, head of R&D; and Akhilesh Manchandani, lead designer, with the 2025 Yezdi Adventure
Q. Can you sell Jawa in the Eastern bloc? I mean don’t they have a restriction on where you can sell Jawa?
We haven’t taken the right but there is no restriction. When we talk to them we have to just pay them royalty for those.
Q. Do they source bikes from you?
I mean of course. Yes.
Q. So who does the selling, them or you?
There is no them. There is a gentleman called Mr (Jiri) Gerle who owns the brand called Jawa. We’ve taken the brand for 30 plus 30 (years), so it’s practical, it’s 30 extendable by 30. Which is perpetuity in technical terms we call it. So whenever we sell, we pay them royalty per bike. So we have to go and ask them for a market, we take a permission and we sell. Abhi toh hamare paas bandwidth hi nahin thi. Our first focus was to formulate BSAs in the Western market, which are much more premium, much bigger BSA is our first trust. By the way, they have been buying and selling Jawa in Europe from day one from us, we sell in Czech Republic already.
Q. I believe they also sell a bike sourced from Brazil...
No, Jawa is only made by us. Brazil or Argentina, one of them has a manufacturing partner. See, those countries are where you have to put up a plant. Cambodia, Brazil, Argentina, Nepal. You have to put up a plant. Otherwise, the duty structure is crazy. So somebody puts up a plant, he does CKD, manufacturing himself. We have a dispute in one place. But for BSA, it’s our brand. We are going everywhere.
Q. Competition in this segment, the classic segment so to speak, is going to hot up even further. Norton’s apparently coming in end of this year...
So they are almost out, there are a lot of others who are almost out. What other price disruption can you see or competition can you see than what you saw last year? Harley (Davidson) is there, Benelli is there, they are higher cc (engine size) lower than us (in price). What are we worried (about)?
Q. Old British makes have a cache in India somehow...
Not all. That’s why we didn’t launch BSA here first. We launched there (UK). The cache of BSA is much bigger there. Yeah, BSA was the largest. BSA had a cache. But is it huge enough for people to remember BSA’s story?
Q. The other thing I wanted to ask you, how is your profitability right now?
We’ll make profit this year. I told you our break evens have actually come down. QTill last year, you didn’t. I’m asking about net profit. We are investing like crazy. Have you seen the number of bikes we are taking out? We are a four-yearold company. We are in investment phase. By the way, we made profit in the first year (pre-Covid). So yeah, unit profitability is there from day one. This is a very profitable company. But the investments are massive. You know, last year we said we were spending ₹1,000 crore.
Q. You are supposed to spend ₹1,000 crore up to 2026, that was supposed to be the outlay.
So we have spent ₹350 (crore), the remaining we will be spending this year. We don’t have some massive cash burns, we are not a new-age company. The losses are very minimal, that also based on the huge depreciation which we are sitting on for the R&D expenditure.
Q. So if you get some more volume...
We will be profitable. We will be crazy profitable. That’s a beauty of the segment.
Q. And what sort of numbers are you looking at? Last year you did about 35,000.
More than that. We did close to 40,000. We will double it, unless we have to take a duty (hit) from US or somewhere. We are irritated because three months no exports. Zero exports.
Q. Was the US a big market?
No. We were launching in the US. We have delayed our date. Anybody who had already launched was sitting on massive stocks of last year at a lower price point. If I come there and pay the duty, how do I compete? What do my distributors have to do? So we haven’t shipped the bike.
Q. And one last question. You said last year when we spoke that you have your electric ready, but the market’s not right. Do you think it’s ripening?
Scooters, yes, definitely. Electric as a category, yes, definitely. Intra city, commuter space, low mileage, lesser power, lesser speed, lesser torque, covered. The kind of power I need, where do I put it? Globally electric market for motorcycle is not there. The moment you pull off the subsidy, the market collapses. Anyway, it’s a piddly little market and that also collapses. Is the current technology at the price point required for this kind of category? I don’t think so.