Classic Legends’ founder on Yezdi relaunch: Won’t make the same mistakes we did with Jawa

After facing a series of setbacks and cancellations owing largely to supply-chain hiccups and delays in deliveries, Classic Legends’ pandemic-beset path appears to be clearing-up. In a candid interview with Moneycontrol, Thareja shares his plans for the brand and India’s biking culture. 

Below are the edited excerpts from the interview:

In November, Jawa’s Instagram handle stated that Yezdi would be setting out to create its own identity. How does the brand intend to do that?

It would have the same dealerships. The same network. When I said it’ll create its own identity, remember historically, Jawa merged into Yezdi. When we launched Jawa, it was not that we had hoped to launch Yezdi someday. The whole product portfolio was planned keeping both the brands in mind. You can’t make motorcycles on a whim. It takes four to five years. I can’t have these two brands, which are very synonymous in people’s minds, cannibalising each other. We wanted to start with the Jawa (the older brand, of the two), move a little ahead with the 42, create a new market segment with the Bobber and then move on to Yezdi.

The motorcycle market has to move up from commuter and entry-level. It had moved-up but it was very polarised by a certain kind of player in the mid-market segment. That’s not right.

What, would you say, ties these machines to the Yezdi of yesteryear?

Attitude. Attitude of the rider. Back in the day, Yezdi was the most modified bike. People used to put knobby tires, increase the handlebar length – so Yezdi, if you ask me, was India’s original Scrambler and ADV bike. I had to go back and pay homage to that Yezdi guy. If you look at the series now, we’ve got Jawa, 42, the Roadster which is higher in power, has more gadgets, it's got a TFT screen LED, etc. Little details will remind you of the Yezdi. Have we taken design cues? No. Any common part, no of course, it’s a brand new bike. This bike is an ode to that attitude.

How do the riding characteristics of these bikes differ?

The torque curve of the bikes is different, we’ve changed the mapping, the suspension, the seating position, the braking etc. One has switchable ABS, one doesn’t. I don’t need traction control on a roadster, but if you go off-road, you require it. They all go 0-60 and 60-80 in a completely different manner. The moment you switch to the Scrambler, you can sense that it behaves the way a street legal dirt bike is supposed to behave. Perfect in the city, well-balanced, gives power when you want. You’ll have to ride them to know the difference. It’s hard to explain.

You co-founded Classic Legends by launching a classic standard, followed by a bobber and now you’ve added an ADV and a scrambler. Do you think the brand is now ready to tackle every motorcycling requirement and the growing competition? 

Yes. This is the Road King series. I’m not calling it the Road King, because the Road King was a legend. So the Road King will come--our efforts will culminate into a Road King which is a much higher capacity bike. But our mid-size market segment portfolio is complete. There’s one jewel, which will come when we have established it in the global market, which is the BSA Goldstar. If you look at the design philosophy there, it’s chalk and cheese. I wanted to have the most eligible single in the world. There’s a charm of riding a single-cylinder motorcycle.

What have you learned after the launch of Jawa? What are the pitfalls that you’re going to avoid this time? 

Now you will see the culmination of our strategy. When we launched Jawa, booking was crazy, before we could ramp-up and meet the demand, we were hit by Covid. We had single source suppliers for every part. One guy in one corner of the country stopped making one nut and our factory used to come to a halt, because I did not have multiple suppliers or second or third source of suppliers. I had 100 dealerships to start with, which were opening the day the delivery started. So we were tackling too many things at the same time. This time we’re starting with 300 dealers. We’ve established dealership networks, multiple parts suppliers; our portfolio is complete. You can sell more only if you have three factors. Either you change the price point, you change the number of distributors or you introduce new products. We’ve done all three together. This is how we compete.

Read also: Why did Jawa cancel booking of a customer?

Do you think those supply-chain issues have been ironed-out and are you prepared to tackle demand?

Ramping-up is essentially a supplier issue and we were simply not prepared when Covid hit. We were not prepared for this crazy disruption that we’ve faced. We’ve seen what happened with Jawa. Earlier what we did was we revealed the bike, two months later we took journalists for a review and three months after that, we gave the bike to customers for a test ride. Three months after that we started delivering it. Because we were establishing the brand. We were establishing dealerships and products. We learned.

In the middle of the pandemic, when I saw 60,000 cancellations, average cancellation was 13 months. Which means the guy had paid money, waited for 13 months on an average. So on the 13th of this month, the bike will be launched, you can go and see the bike, you can test ride it, you can book it and you can take the bike home. Unlike the case of Jawa, the bikes are en route to the dealerships as we speak. So that’s one huge change. Second, we are aware that there’s a semiconductor issue. We’ve got multiple sources for parts, we’ve stored inventory and planned our production a little better. So obviously, we can’t make the same mistake again, particularly with a brand that’s 10 times larger in terms of vehicle park. The vehicle parc of the Yezdi will be 10 or 12 times bigger than Jawa.

 What would you expect the waiting period to be like? And how big a factor do you expect the chip shortage to be, in causing delays?

No idea. You tell me, when will Covid-19 be over? The chip shortage however is getting better. There is disruption, but there are no shut factories. I’ve had 1.5 years of planning for this launch. Are we picture perfect? No. Do I have all the moving parts under control? No. Do I have a much greater sense of it? Yes.

The BSA Goldstar is a 650cc machine, how different will the Yezdi Road King featuring that 650cc motor be?

The look will be different, the pricing will be different. As of now, I’ve got my hands full for years. I have classic products. By definition of that I don’t need to do a product upgrade. I need to do a lifestyle upgrade. I need to adopt subcultures. I need to teach people how to go off-roading. That’s how we create this tribe. We’re probably the only people who do the maximum number of company-sponsored rides today. Will I take a 650 from a BSA and slap it on a Yezdi? I don’t think so.

Legacy motorcycle makers haven’t fared well in the EV game. Where do you see the EV market, right now in terms of consumer interest and infrastructure and where does Classic Legends fit in the EV scheme of things?

We have an R&D centre in Coventry, funded by the UK government. We have six partners who’ve also put their money separately and received funding from the British government. So it's become a very large project. I’m a small company, I’m a start-up, so I have no legacy baggage on my back. I don’t have to convert a whole assembly-line or repurpose old designs for EVs.

Are we ready? Yes. Is the (Indian) market ready? No. Let someone else sort out city-to-city charging infrastructure, when the market is ready, we will be ready too. To my mind, the mid-market segment will be the last to see the shift towards EVs, for various reasons. Electric motorcycles, at the moment, are just not ready to cover those distances in India. I’m not a legacy guy, take Covid out and I’m an 18-month-old company. When it starts, it will start with the BSA. It’s a modular battery pack, I can increase and decrease the range so yeah, that’s the beauty of it.