Royal Enfield

In 2000, Royal Enfield was selling barely more than 2,000 motorcycles a month against a plant capacity of 6,000. Its parent group had tried to sell or close it, and the executive who asked for two years to fix it was in his twenties.

Siddhartha Lal had joined the Eicher group in 1999 and took charge of Royal Enfield in 2000, reportedly at 26. Volumes were roughly 25,000 bikes a year, and the product explained why. Forbes India described engine seizures, oil leaks and electrical failures, and Eicher's own chairman said in 2021 that the division was making large losses and was slated for closure when Lal took over. Forbes India reported that Lal, who held a master's in automotive engineering from Leeds, asked his father Vikram Lal for two years to turn it around.

“Keep the sound and the silhouette, fix the leaks and the breakdowns, and only then sell the dream.”

What he did not do was change the soul of the bike. The thump and the classic shape stayed. What changed was everything that made the bike hard to live with. A unit-construction engine, which Lal singled out in 2012 as a critical and visible step, arrived on the Classic in 2009 and, Forbes India says, cured the oil leaks of the old separate-gearbox design. Die-cast aluminium parts and CNC machining replaced manual machining for tighter tolerances. Back-lane showrooms gave way to proper stores, one of them in Delhi's Khan Market. And the brand stopped being the staid, agrarian Bullet and became a reason to ride, through rider clubs and events such as Himalayan Odyssey and Rider Mania.

Focus came with it. Eicher says Lal's first major move was to shed under-performing businesses and concentrate on Royal Enfield motorcycles and Eicher trucks and buses; Outlook Business dates the sell-off to 2005 and counts 13 of the group's 15 divisions. The results compounded slowly, then quickly. By 2012 Lal said monthly sales had risen from about 2,000 to over 10,000, and by 2015 Forbes India put Royal Enfield at 40% of Eicher's turnover and 80% of its operating profit, a business once slated for closure.

Eicher's 2021 release says Royal Enfield pioneered leisure riding in India and held more than 90% of the above-250cc market for the decade to 2021, while Lal moved to the UK in 2015 to steer its global ambitions. In FY26, Royal Enfield sold 1,227,977 motorcycles, up 22% and its highest ever, with 120,634 of them exported. It was the second year in a row above one million, and roughly fifty times the volume of 2000.

The lesson is not that a young leader can save a dying brand. It is that the sound and the silhouette were assets worth keeping, and the leaks, the breakdowns and the back-lane showrooms were the real problem. Lal kept the first, fixed the second, and only then built the dream on top. Reliability came before romance.

Sources: Forbes India (2015), Autocar Professional (2012), Outlook Business, MSL Magazine (2019), and Eicher Motors' press releases (August 2021 and May 2026) and executive profile. Sales figures are company-reported; Lal's age at takeover is as commonly reported.