Kinetic to launch 4-stroke scooter Nova; Rs 10-crore ad campaign to break in March

Pune-based Kinetic Motor announced the launch of its 4-stroke autogeared 115-cc scooter Kinetic Nova in the capital yesterday. The national launch, however, will happen only in March. The Kinetic brass, therefore, was not willing to divulge the price of Nova. "It's too early," was the common refrain. Industry observers seem to believe the price would be in the Rs 38,000- Rs 40,000 bracket.

Among other features of Nova, the 4-stroke engine delivers 7.2 bhp of power and promises 60 km per lt mileage. Nova has been designed in collaboration with a Taiwan-based design house U/E/N. The model would be manufactured at the Pithampur (near Indore) factory. An investment of Rs 20 crore has gone into the development of the model. The company is targeting sales of 50,000 scooters for the first fiscal.

Alongside, Kinetic is gearing up to showcase a couple of its new brands at the Auto Expo to be flagged off on January 15 in Delhi. Among the brands to be displayed at the Expo is Kinetic Boss, its third motorcycle brand. The other two are Challenger and GF 125. Priced at Rs 32,000, Boss is positioned in the economy segment and would give mileage of 75 km per lt.

Right now, the priority for Kinetic is to thrash out the communication strategy for Nova. The Rs 10-crore ad campaign devised by incumbent Mudra Communication, Mumbai,is slated for release in March. Sulajja F. Motwani, joint managing director, Kinetic, says, "Nova is a scooter for the modern man. Today's modern man is image and style conscious and, at the same time, he is very pragmatic as is suggested in the tagline of Nova - ‘style meets substance'. The campaign would break in print first, followed by television.

Kinetic is confident about the success of Nova. "People are upgrading to autogeared scooters very fast," says a senior marketing executive. The size of the scooter market is estimated at 7 lakh units per annum. The thrust of Kinetic's marketing strategy would be to exploit regional markets to grow business. Though Kinetic has grown in the north by 40 per cent and by 200 per cent in Delhi alone in the last nine months, it expects an incremental growth from the D class cities over the next few months. © 2002 agencyfaqs!