The cult of cool: Making India fall in love again with Jawa and Yezdi

How three men passionate about 'cool' motorcycles are trying to make India fall in love again with Jawa and Yezdi, with a leaf out of Royal Enfield's book

Mahindra and Mahindra’s share of the two-wheeler market in 2018-19 was not worth calculating. That year, 21.2 million two-wheelers were sold in India, to which M&M’s contribution was 4,004 motorcycles.
 

At that time, M&M, having acquired Kinetic Motors in 2008, was selling commuter bikes, the none-too-fancy vehicles used for daily trips from home to the workplace. This market was – and is – under the stranglehold of Hero MotoCorp and Honda.
 

“We should have never gone to the commuter bike side,” Anand Mahindra, M&M’s Chairman, said in December 2019, at an event organised by British air carrier Virgin Atlantic with the theme, “Business as an adventure”. This, he said, was a “product failure”, a failure he thought of as “capital”, as much as financial or human capital.
 

That capital appears to be yielding returns now.
 

In 2018, Mahindra joined hands with Anupam Thareja, Founder of Phi Capital, and Boman Irani, of real estate firm Rustomjee (not the actor you might be thinking of) to resurrect the iconic Czech motorcycle brand, Jawa, and its later avatar in India, Yezdi. Thus was born Classic Legends, a company 60 per cent owned by Mahindra & Mahindra and 20 per cent each by Thareja and Irani.
 

Jawa bikes first became popular in India in the 1960s under a licensing agreement between the Czech company that owned the Jawa brand and Ideal Jawa India Ltd. When the licence expired, Ideal Jawa, owned by two Parsi entrepreneurs, Rustom Irani and Farrokh Irani, continued manufacturing the motorcycle under the Yezdi brand.
 

Relaunched by Classic Legends in 2019, Jawa and Yezdi have retained the essence of the classic design philosophy that worked for them back in the 1960s and 1970s, what is now called retro cool or cult bikes. They are selling a combined 4,500 motorcycles a month – more than what M&M during the 12 months from April 2018 to March 2019. The company says it is poised to make a profit by March next year.
 

Production with passion
 

“To build these bikes… it is not only about production but also about passion. We have learned that if you are in the classic vehicles business, then the people who lead it must be passionate about it,” Mahindra told Business Standard. Drawing a parallel with M&Ms popular lifestyle sports utility vehicle, Thar, Mahindra said the motorcycles would similarly cater to a niche segment that prefers to go out on long and adventurous rides.
 

Passion is a box Classic Legends checks easily.
 

Thareja spent years with international banks. In later life, he was with Royal Enfield, as part of the team that revived the company’s motorcycles. Since 2008, he has been running his own company, Phi Capital, which specialises in turnarounds. And he still finds the time to go on long motorcycle rides.
 

Irani shares a history with Jawa and Yezdi. He is the son of Ruston Irani of Ideal Jawa fame. His company still owned the Yezdi brand when Mahinda and Thareja decided to relaunch Jawa. He came on board Classic Legends without a second thought.
 

Classic Legends has so far invested Rs 1,000 crore and plans to deploy another Rs 1,000 crore in the next three years to take its motorcycles to all parts of the country and abroad as well. The new investment will be made in tooling for new products, marketing, distribution setup for international markets, and new product development. This amount will come from a combination of internal accruals, existing shareholders, and external investors.
 

“We have M&M’s Pithampur plant near Indore to make half a million bikes a year," says Thareja.
 

Jawa and Yezdi had a promising start. On the first day of booking, its website crashed due to heavy traffic. But the pandemic arrived soon after, causing all sorts of disruptions to the supply chain. As the pandemic ebbed, the company decided to make sure its customers received the bikes on time. The company has also launched BSA motorbikes in the United Kingdom, catering to the premium segment.

 

A leaf out of Enfield’s book
 

Classic Legends is taking a leaf out of Royal Enfield’s playbook. The latter was staring at the end of the road when Siddhartha Lal took charge as its CEO in 2000 and turned it around by leveraging the qualities that were supposed to be its drawbacks. Its old styling became the new retro cool. The Royal Enfield community and culture helped in no small measure.
 

“The success story of Royal Enfield was driven by bringing in the concept of self plus society. The real point is the motorcycle culture that we developed and evangelised,” says Mohit Dhar Jayal, Chief Brand Officer, Royal Enfield.
 

The company’s sales increased from 28,361 units in 2003-04 to 834,895 in 2022-23. And it has gone global, with exports rising from a mere 8,800 units in 2015-16 to 100,000 in 2022-23.
 

Where Royal Enfield goes, its culture goes as well. “Another turnaround moment was the decision to take the brand global, around 2014. We are trying to replicate this culture internationally,’ says Jayal.
 

Lal, himself a motorcycling enthusiast, was closely involved in the engineering and development. He also rode hundreds of kilometres on Royal Enfield bikes and was the brain behind many of the initiatives, such as having a single platform. At present, Royal Enfield has a market share of 90 per cent in the 250-750cc segment.
 

No free run
 

Harley-Davidson, whose design is as classic and as retro as they come, is trying to script its own comeback story in India through a partnership with Hero MotoCorp. Within days after it started accepting bookings for the X440, the most pocket-friendly Harley ever, the process had to stop in the face of an avalanche of 25,597 applications.
 

Harley had to exit India in 2020, after struggling with sales and revenue.
 

There are others trying to ride on nostalgia. Yamaha of Japan is trying to bring back the RX100, which was a favourite with motorcycle enthusiasts until climate regulations put an end to the two-stroke bike.
 

But it won’t be easy. Earlier this year, Yamaha India's Chairman, Eishin Chihana, said the motorcycle will need an engine capacity of at least 200cc to be able to meet the emission norms, and even then it may not be able to replicate the exhaust sound for which the RX100 was famous.
 

Maybe Yamaha should focus more on “passion and “retro and “cool”.