What will the competitors do?

 So this is Honda's belated gift for the common Indian biker. Not bad. :) Good for the Red Riding Dude.

Must be remembered that it is slated for a April 2011 launch (based on reports in the media). So we've got effectively 5 months before it launches.

Current offerings on the same lines are:

Yamaha R15 with a tag of Rs.1.2 lacs approx on-road
Kawasaki Ninja 250 priced at around Rs.3 lacs on-road

Yes there is a huge gap. So Honda CBR will supposedly fill this with on-road price of around Rs.2 lacs.

My gut feeling is that some motorcycle manufacturers are not going to take this lightly. Expect Yamaha to announce a 250cc launch at about the same price as that for the Honda CBR 250. Expect Hyosung to bring in its 250cc. Won't speculate on the price.

But the gap isn't necessarily between Rs.1.2 lacs and Rs.2 lacs as is anticipated. The real gap is between 70k and 1.2lacs.

Expect Bajaj and TVS to launch 250cc versions of Pulsar and Apache respectively priced competitively around the Rs.1 lac mark. And that will set the country racing. Fingers very much crossed.