PTI

New Delhi: If car manufacturers are flooding the market with luxury brands, why should the poor cousin, the common man’s bicycle lag behind?

After catering to the common man for years, bicycle companies are now focusing their attention on the urban Indian market, especially youth and children, and are looking to expand India’s base of biking enthusiasts in the professional and adventure categories.

Leading American bicycle brand Trek recently unveiled two high-end bikes - Five Star Intra with a price tag of Rs14,235 and Fuel 30, which has been priced at Rs33,156.

“These bikes will help evolve the sports like mountain biking in a country where very few are interested in such sports,” says Pete St Onge, International Territory Head, Trek Bicycle Corp.

“Before introducing such high-end bicycles to the Indian markets, Trek experimented with such cycles in China three years back and drew a huge response from the people, ” he says.

Trek last year tied up with Indian bicycle firm FireFox Bikes Pvt Ltd to sell its products in the Indian market.

Shiv Inder Singh, managing director, Firefox bikes, says “The total bicycle market in India is of 12 million units, out of which 5-7% is for niche bicycles.

“We expect to double our sales this year,” says Singh, adding the company expects to increase sales of its bikes from 12,000 units at present to 60,000 units by 2011.

“Our bikes target the urban youth and kids. This is a sizable population which follows Western trends. And since adventure sports is growing in popularity in the West, we hope this will be reflected in India too, ” he adds.