Luna reborn in e-avatar, to seek out entry-level buyers
New Delhi: The iconic Luna, India’s first moped born in the 1970s, is looking to capture the entry-level market for two-wheelers once again, albeit in an electric avatar, in a shift away from the bulk of the electric two-wheeler market consisting of scooters priced upwards of over ₹100,000. Kinetic Green, the electric mobility business of the Kinetic Group, whose Kinetic Engineering used to manufacture the Luna, is looking to appeal to customers in tier-II and tier-III towns for whom personal mobility has been inaccessible because of rising two-wheeler prices, resulting in the rapid shrinking of the entry-level, or moped segment. The e-Luna will be priced at ₹69,999 ex-showroom onwards, for variants with ranges of 80 kms to over 120 kms on a single charge.
While the Pune-based company, which also manufactures electric three-wheelers and will soon make golf carts in a joint venture with the Italian Tonino Lamborghini group, says it has also signed agreements with three fleet operators to supply 50,000 units of the e-Luna for e-commerce and logistics uses over the next 12 months. Of the 100,000 e-Lunas the company is looking to produce this year, a majority is likely to be sold, however, to retail customers as a “personal-cum-commercial use case”, Sulajja Firodia Motwani, founder and CEO, Kinetic Green, told Mint.
“The E-Luna can be bought at a monthly EMI of ₹2,000, and at a charging cost of ₹300 per month—meaning the per month cost of owning the scooter will be less than ₹2,500, which will enable a large number of Indian customers who are not personally mobile at all and dependent on public transport, to come into personal mobility. What the Luna did for the masses, our target is for the e-Luna to do the same for an aspirational set of customers who want an accessible and affordable two-wheeler. A lot of people from new demographics will come into the segment,” she said. “We are expecting an orderbook of 50,000 units just with the B2B segment this year. The product is specially designed for them and comes with a running cost of only 10 paisa/ kilometer.”
Kinetic Green, which is also looking to hit the markets via an IPO in the next three-four years, expects the Luna to give its volumes a generous boost. The company sold 820 high-speed electric scooters in January, making it the ninth-largest e-scooter maker by volumes. The largest player, Ola Electric, sold 30,000 scooters last month.
“We can expand the entire entry-level segment in two-wheelers just because of the economies of running an electric two-wheeler, since there is no fuel cost,” she said.
Arun Firodia, chairman Kinetic Group, was awarded the Padmashri in 2012 for products like Kinetic Honda and Kinetic Luna which pioneered personal mobility in the early 1970s.
“We will be able to ramp up to 500,000 units in production capacity in the next 3-4 years,” Pankaj Sharma, president, two-wheeler business, Kinetic Green told Mint. The two-wheeler will be manufactured at the company’s factory near Ahmednagar in Maharashtra, he said. The product is designed and engineered in-house.
“There is also a market for the product in tier-1 cities for a bunch of solopreneurs so our demand will be a combination of small-town dwellers and large cities. Though B2B is an attractive segment, we believe 80% of the market for the product will be retail,” she said. Two-thirds of Kinetic Green’s distribution network is in tier two and three markets. The company will expand its distribution footprint to 1,000 sales outlets from 300 now, over the next three years, achieving 500 sales points by September this year.
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Published: 07 Feb 2024, 10:42 PM IST
Ganesh
http://ganesh@finplay.inFinance enthusiast, Mutual fund expert.