Bajaj posts 85 per cent growth in December bike sales

Bajaj Auto Ltd, India's second-largest manufacturer of two-wheelers by sales, announced on Monday that it had registered an 85 per cent growth in motorcycle sales last December over the same month in the previous year. Bike sales increased from 118,510 units in December 2008 to 219,920 units in December 2009, it said.
 
For the April-December 2009 period, Bajaj's total motorcycle sales increased 17 per cent to 1,794,359 units against 1,534,149 units in the corresponding period in 2008, the company said in a release from Mumbai.

In December 2009, Bajaj launched the new Pulsar 135 LS with the aim of making it a million units per year brand, the release added.

Bajaj's three-wheeler sales also went up by 17 per cent, with the company selling 244,655 units during April-December 2009, compared with 209,699 units in the same period last year.

The company also continued to see strong growth in the export market. Exports increased 9 per cent to 676,531 during April-December 2009 from 620,880 in same period last year, the release said.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, managing director Rajiv Bajaj said he hoped to finish the financial year with the company's highest sales ever, particularly in view of the pick-up in sales since August.

On the prospect of new launches in the current fiscal, he said, "We have learnt the hard way that in this business less is more, so we stayed with two launches, that of the Pulsar and Discover. They both have been very successful.