“About half a dozen.” That is what Hero MotoCorp chief executive Harshavardhan Chitale said at the SIAM convention this week when the subject was how many premium motorcycles his company is launching this year. Eleven weeks earlier he had told Business Today: “In the ongoing financial year (FY27), you should see three new model launches in the premium segment.” Three became six, and not one new motorcycle went on sale in between. Which tells you the number was never the point.
Here’s the thing. The number is the bit every outlet ran, and it is the least interesting thing Hero said all month.
Look at what the company actually did instead. Premium is now its own business unit under chief business officer Anuj Dua, with its own manufacturing facility, its own paint line, its own R&D team and product planners, and vision-based inspection on the line.
That last one is not a press release word. That is a camera watching panels go past, and a company only buys one of those when it has decided its finish is not good enough. Capital expenditure is the only language in which a manufacturer cannot lie to you.
What the July sales sheet says while the press conference is talking
Hero despatched 499,943 motorcycles and scooters in July.
| Splendors | 335,246 units |
| Xtreme 250 | 322 units |
| Karizma 210 | 1 unit |
| Mavrick 440 | 0 unit |
One Karizma. My first touring bike was a Karizma, back when the seat was a sofa and the brakes were a rumour, and I have spent twenty years telling people it was better than they remember. Hero sold one of its descendants in a month.
And I had a Mavrick 440 for a week in 2024, which is a genuinely likeable thing, all shove from low down and an eye-openingly good lazy thump through the pegs when you short-shift it. Zero. In a market that bought half a million Hero two-wheelers that month.
So it is not the product, no? The Xtreme 250R is Rs 1.73 lakh ex-showroom for 29.5bhp and a trellis frame, and nobody arguing about it online argues about the engine or the way it looks. They argue about whether the one they take home will be a good one.
I have watched riders talk each other into an older, slower, less equipped Gixxer 250 on reliability alone, which is a spookily damning thing for a brand to have to live with. A chap four months into an XPulse 210 is still waiting for someone at his service centre to work out what is wrong with it. Not what to charge him. What is wrong with it.
Being fair to the biggest motorcycle maker in the world
Hero builds more motorcycles than anyone alive and has spent most of its life building one kind of them very, very well. Premium is a different skill, mind you, and it is learnt in paint booths and warranty claims and diagnostic training, not in launch counts. Can they get there? Of course they can. Inside this financial year, with six bikes at once? No. Nobody could.
Which is why the factory matters more than the forecast. Six launches out of the old system gets you six more lotteries. Six out of a line with a camera on it and its own engineers might get you a motorcycle a buyer does not have to gamble on.
What would change my mind is small and specific: an Xtreme 250R I can walk around without finding the panel gaps, and a buying thread where nobody uses the word gamble.
Announce three, announce six. Build the good one.
