Royal Enfield will unveil its all-new 650cc motorcycle at EICMA, the Milan Motorcycle Show, on Tuesday.

Company CEO, Siddhartha Lal, told a group of visiting international journalists here on Sunday that the bike would roll out of the Chennai plant in April 2018. In a sense, it will be the first global product from Royal Enfield that will be sold in India and a host of other countries.

The new 650cc parallel-twin engine that will power the motorcycle, was designed and developed at the Royal Enfield Technical Centre in Leicestershire (UK) in tandem with the Chennai team.

“This is the second phase of our growth, which is about new thinking in style, product and geography. The goal now is to become a strong global brand in the next 10-15 years,” said Lal.

Royal Enfield is working “super hard” but, equally, is “not in some tearing rush” as the top priority right now is to understand and create markets. This is where the new 650cc bike will play a critical role in paving the way for this big global drive.

Work on the project began back in 2014 and while the bike may not have the “familiar thump of a Bullet, it has a rumble”. Targeted customers will typically be those who love Royal Enfield and others keen on an upgrade within the portfolio.

Likewise, there will be other motorcyclists around the world who would want a new 650cc bike, while some share will come in from competition. South America, Asia, the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australia have been targeted as key markets.

Over the last several years, Royal Enfield has built a base of over 2.5 million customers in India, who, along with other brand loyalists, have been “asking for something more”. As the world converges to middleweight motorcycles, the company is getting set to create the right infrastructure in making this a reality.

In the process, added Lal, Royal Enfield had moved from being a “mom and pop” store of 15 years ago to building new teams, hiring people and generating fresh ideas. The UK Tech Centre is part of this drive where “we have moved on from Chennai to experiencing different parts of the world”.

Royal Enfield’s turnaround story began six years ago when it grew rapidly from being a company making a few thousand bikes every month at a decades-old plant in Tiruvottiyur near Chennai to clocking over eight lakh units annually from three facilities today.

As Lal said, when demand began picking up in 2010-11, there was also a growing awareness that the company needed to enhance its skills in manufacturing and after-sales in a big way. This has now become a reality thanks to the setting up of a new plant in Oragadam and, more recently, another unit at Vallam Vadagal, again near Chennai.

“We have learnt a lot in manufacturing and in making motorcycles. There has been a continuous improvement and excellence in quality,” said Lal. The supply chain has also been overhauled with some traditional vendors pushing the envelope to cope with the new manufacturing paradigm, while others have been “ruthlessly moved out”.

Royal Enfield also realised amidst this turnaround phase that it needed more talent for product development and began roping in consultants from the UK, Austria and Germany. It was during this time that it conceived of the UK Tech Centre, which became a reality in May this year.

(The writer is in the UK at the invitation of Royal Enfield)