Mahindra fixes Stallio's glitches

CHENNAI: The two-wheeler division of Mahindra & Mahindra has cranked up R&D surveillance of its parts and vendors to resolve the clutch and gear-shift problem that hit its first motorcycle Stallio within a month of its launch last October. The company, which halted production to fix hardness in the clutch and gearshift in some of its bikes, will relaunch the 100 cc Stallio with the necessary changes in June. The problem, says Anoop Mathur, president-two-wheeler sector, M&M, was "variability in some parts that led to this issue on a small percentage of bikes in the field". In other words, "some components of the bike did not perform according to "standard expectation". That inconsistency resulted in a couple of complaints.

"When we launched the Stallio we had great demand and we were ramping up production and supplies through October and November," says Mathur. "Mid December we received some feedback on hardness of clutch and related difficulty in gear shifting in some of the motorcycles. Although this was not a sizable number, we immediately went into analysis mode." The company decided to scale down production of the bike sometime in mid January and a month later says it has fixed the issue "from vendor to end product".

M&M's two-wheeler division kicked off with scooters which has done well for the company totting up total numbers of over 200,000 units since its entry into two-wheelers. When the Stallio's problem cropped up, the company roped in Engines Engineering, the Italian group company that was involved in the design of the Stallio to make sure there were no design defects or manufacturing faults. Its in-house R&D team led the effort and when both design and manufacturing emerged clean, they went "back right to the starting point of the production of that part tracing it to its final installation in the bike" to sort out the problem.

The company decided to settle the issue instead of waiting for the number of complaints to snowball because it's new in the motorcycle market and is more interested in building long-term brand credibility than short-term numbers. With its star debutant Mojo due this festive season, the brand needed to take "pre-emptive action" to establish its credentials. "We have taken necessary action which will take care of all future production," says Mathur. "We expect to be back in full production soon as we have also been facing some component shortages and are resolving this as we speak."

Analysts say the company's decision to halt production is a smart move. "The good thing about the Stallio is that M&M didn't sell too many vehicles before taking action so there weren't too many bikes on the road for the problem to be noticed on a large scale before it was rectified," says Mahantesh Sabarad, senior analyst with Mumbai-based Fortune Financial Services. He says glitches are not a big deal in the two-wheeler market where the established players fix bugs long after a product has sold considerable numbers in the market. "Two-wheeler buyers don't upgrade to a higher product within the same brand, they upgrade to a car," says Sabarad. "The 100 cc bike market is a commodity market. There's not much brand behaviour there."