Niche motorcycle maker Jawa Yezdi Motorcycles has seen its numbers shooting up and expects to sell more than 80,000 bikes in the current year compared with about 40,000 last year. This growth is riding on the fortunes of the updated Yezdi Adventure and Roadster.

Speaking in Calcutta, Anupam Thareja, co-founder, Classic Legends, which makes Jawa, Yezdi and BSA motorcycles, said that the entire GST reduction benefit has been passed on to the customer and has resulted in a price drop of around 8.6 per cent across the range for Yezdi and Jawa since they slot into the sub-350cc slab. That has made the bikes more affordable and improved offtake.

Admitting that part of the sales surge at the end of September was a result of the GST cut and buyers withholding purchases before that, he said that he expects some of the higher demand to continue. With the GST cut, prices of Jawa and Yezdi motorcycles are now under Rs 2 lakh (between Rs 1.59 lakh and 1.99 lakh), making them substantially less expensive than before. The company passed on the entire GST benefit to the customer.

Jawa and Yezdi motorcycles either have a 293cc or a 334cc Alpha2 liquid-cooled engine. The latter is significantly more powerful compared with most of its 350cc competitor bikes with 29ps of power and 30Nm of torque, which, according to Thareja, is a manifestation of the fact that the manufacturer is using the most advanced technology in their segment.

The company has also expanded its sales and service footprint to over 450 across India to ease access and maintenance. With a cut in the cost of after-sales components post-GST 2.0, cost of ownership of Jawa and Yezdi motorcycles is expected to come down as well. The motorcycles come with four-year/50,000km standard warranty, extended coverage options of up to six years, one year of roadside assistance, and a range of ownership benefits reflecting the company’s confidence in its engineering excellence and long-term reliability of its machines.

Thareja, who was in the city to launch the new Yezdi Roadster, said: “We are thrilled to launch the Yezdi Roadster in the heart of the City of Joy. If there’s one market that doesn’t follow fads, it’s Calcutta. This city values ideas that endure. For the people here, emotion is an insight, not an impulse, and reason completes the purchase. We are not chasing fads either, we’re here to contemporise classics.

“These motorcycles are nostalgic yet resilient like a monsoon ride through Howrah Bridge, turning the ordinary into legend. The people of the city see both the heart and the engineering behind our performance classics. Calcutta’s charming chaos, with its sub-cultures of poets and pandals, mirrors our ride: Powerful, raw, and eternally cool. I can say from the response to our new Yezdis and the award-winning Jawa 42 FJ this festive season that motorcycling as a way of life is here to stay, much like the city’s love for football, food, and art.”