Episode 52: Mini-Series-Royal Enfield: India's Global Lifestyle Brand

The One Percent Project- Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Resilience

Royal Enfield:

When Vikram Lal, CEO & Founder of The Eicher Group, bought the Royal Enfield brand in 1994, the company was already losing money and market share. Product, operations, management, marketing and sales were facing issues. Many Eicher CEOs tried to revive the brand but failed to get Enfield back to its glorious old days. The company was about to shut Enfield when Siddhartha Lal, Vikram's 26-year-old son, put his hand up to revive Enfield. This is a mini-episode on how Siddhartha took Royal Enfield from the brink of bankruptcy to becoming a lifestyle brand and India's first global consumer brand.

Royal Enfield is The Oldest Motorcycle Brand in Continuous Production. It found its origin in a British needle-making factory in the late 1800s. In 1901, the first Royal Enfield motorcycle was unveiled. The company made its way to the Indian market in 1949 and later set up a JV with Madras motors. The British arm of the company over the years was unable to sustain itself and eventually shut down, but the Indian JV business chugged along.

In India, Royal Enfield is a cult, not just a motorcycle company. It is as urban a brand as rural. It was brought to India by the Brits, adopted by the Indian army and police, got popular among the socially powerful Zamindars- landlords in the 1960s. Today it is a social icon among millennials.

When Siddhartha signed up for the job, he faced the Harley Davidson dilemma if you innovate, you upset the fans, and if you don't, your brand dies. So he positioned Royal Enfield as a lifestyle brand and kept its classic design and iconic engine thump. The new Royal Enfield was about independence, passion and freedom. This attracted the youth. They cared less about performance and mileage and more about being a part of a 100- year old nostalgia. They bought the new Royal Enfield because of the old one.

He went on to take serval other counterintuitive decisions. For example, he built a new engine for Enfield, which was not a popular decision among Enfield fans. He chose to shut down the newly inaugurated Jaipur plant and kept the 50-year-old Chennai plant running. Siddartha pushed for international penetration into the U.S., Australia, Thailand and the U.K.

As of June 2022, Royal Enfield's domestic sales increased by 40% YoY. There is a long way to go for Enfield, but Siddhathra has been able to revive and re-position Enfield as India's first global lifestyle brand. If you found this interesting, head on to reading Amrit Raj's book, Indian Icon: A Cult Called Royal Enfield.