Mumbai: Aprilia, a Piaggio Group brand that sells superbikes in India, is set to enter India’s fast-growing scooter market, Piaggio Vehicles Pvt. Ltd said in a statement on Monday.
Aprilia plans to introduce its maiden scooter offering, the SR150, in August this year.
To be designed and engineered in Italy, the scooter will be manufactured at Piaggio’s India plant in Baramati, Maharashtra, and sell at an introductory price of Rs65,000.
Bookings for the new Aprilia SR150 will commence shortly and will be available through Piaggio’s distributor network across the country.
This will be the second scooter brand from the Piaggio Group in India. It already sells the Vespa brand of gearless scooters. In the three months to June, Piaggio sold 7,107 units of the Vespa against 6,791 units a year ago, according to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam).
India, one of the largest scooter markets in the world with nearly five million units sold in 2015, saw a growth of 20% in the first half of 2016 compared to the same period last year. Scooter sales in India rose to 1,372,337 units in the quarter that ended in June against 1,079,535 units a year ago, according to Siam.
The Aprilia SR150 will be shod with five-spoke, 14-inch wheels—similar to the Aprilia racing bikes which are seen on the MotoGP circuit. It will have a single-cylinder 150cc, four-stroke engine.
With the Aprilia SR150, Piaggio hopes to reach out to the urban youth, the company said. Keeping in mind the Aprilia heritage, the SR150 combines the feel of a sports bike with the ease of a scooter, making it a crossover vehicle from the brand, the company added.
“After the success of Ape and the positioning of the Vespa in the premium segment of the Indian market, we are further strengthening our offering in the subcontinent with the entry of Aprilia’s SR150 scooter,” said Piaggio Group chairman and chief executive Roberto Colaninno.
Piaggio has received a favourable response to all its launches in the country; with the launch of the Aprilia SR150, it aims to increase its footprint across the geography, said Stefano Pelle, managing director and chief executive of Piaggio Vehicles. The design aesthetics of the SR150 reflect the sporty character of the Aprilia brand with a lightweight engine which creates a new category in India’s scooter segment, he added.