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Tired of your motorcycle’s ‘hot seat’ and an uneasy helmet in a tropical weather?
A Gujarat-based company on Wednesday formally introduced innovative motorcycle seat covers that it claimed would absorb less heat and make it 12 to 20 degree cooler in extreme heat conditions. The company is also ready to launch a helmet that keeps the rider’s head relatively cool, literally and figuratively!
The Samsons Group, which has sold two lakh seat covers after it soft-launched the product last year in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, on Wednesday announced its formal launch. At Rs 450 a piece, the comfortable product is three-times as expensive as the traditional seat covers, said Mukesh Motasha, Director, Marketing, adding the company is targeting to sell 10-12 lakh pieces in a year, worth Rs 30 crore, in Gujarat alone.
The Joyride-brand seat covers, manufactured using the Phase-Changed Materials (PCMs) technology for balancing temperatures, conceptualised by the USA’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for suits tailored for astronauts, would last five times longer than the ordinary seat covers. These covers are scratch resistant and maintain a brand new look for its entire life span. The product is also eco-friendly as it reduces consumption of up to four kgs of plastic per user over the three-year life of the vehicle. And it comes with three years’ warranty that covers cracking, tearing, fraying and stitching, he said.
The original concept was evolved by Harley-Davidson 20 years ago, he said.
The eight-decade old Samsons Group, having two plants in 130 acres at Halol (Vadodara) has received many awards, including the one by Toyota in 2012, for introducing the best products, Motasha said, adding the company’s major clients include Maruti, Bajaj and Hyundai.
He said India now has about 12 crore motorcycles, including one crore in Gujarat, but only 3 to 4% of riders use a helmet due to hot weather. Samsons plans to introduce a new helmet using PCM technology that would encourage bikers to wear helmets which reduce sweating by 30%. The price of this product would, at nearly Rs 1,200 apiece, be 40% higher than that of the best helmets available now.
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