The Economic Times reminds us that the Kinetic/Italjet deal is certainly not the first collaboration between Italian and Indian corporations. As we all know LML, Bajaj, SIL and others have made Italian scooters in the past, and just as Italy helped fuel India’s original manufacturing boom, a new wave of Italian cooperation is fueling the current Indian boom.
Some statistics from the report:
- Italy is India’s 10th most important export destination.
- Italy is India’s 18th most important supplier.
- India’s top export destinations among EU members:
- UK
- Germany
- Belgium
- Italy
- India’s top suppliers among EU members:
- Belgium
- Germany
- UK
- France
- Italy
- Italian direct investments in India between 1991 and 2005 is US$485.7 million (1.58% of all foreign direct investment in India)
- Technical cooperation with India:
- U.S.
- Germany
- UK
- Japan
- Italy
Wow! Interesting! I want an Indiajet Dragster!
mike
ps you mean Kinetic / Italjet. deal not APrilia I think. Also, didn’t Honda have a deal with Kinetic? Could that mean Italjet styling and Honda engines? If so they could be the best new scooters around, potentially.
Yes, I meant Italjet, not Aprilia of course, I fixed it in the story, thanks.
Seems like Honda has several deals going on in India, in fact I think I read somewhere that Hero Honda is more or less independent of Honda now and finding itself competing with other Honda joint ventures.
I’m dying to see who is behind getting these Kinetic Velociferos into the US, what kind of motor they’ll have, and what other models we’ll see. If they do it right (and bring the Dragster here) they could make a huge dent in the market. I’m also very excited about Genuine’s PGO deal, early reports about the Buddy are fantastic, and PGO has some other interesting bikes that Genuine is considering bringing in.