TL; DR
- Bajaj Auto and Triumph Motorcycles will launch 350cc bikes by April 2026 to benefit from lower GST under the new tax rules.
- The move could cut prices, intensify competition with Royal Enfield, and may extend to KTM 390 and Bajaj’s 400cc models.
Bajaj Auto MD and CEO Rajiv Bajaj has confirmed in an interview with CNBC-TV18 that a new range of 350cc Triumph motorcycles will go on sale in India by April 2026. The announcement puts a date on what had been an open secret in India’s biking circles for months.
Tax Shake-Up Accelerates Bajaj–Triumph Strategy
The move is a direct response to India’s GST 2.0 framework, which came into effect in September 2025. Under the revised structure, bikes above 350cc now attract a steep 40 percent tax — lumped into the same “sin and luxury” bracket as premium goods. Drop that threshold below, and the tax rate falls to 18 percent. For Bajaj and Triumph, whose entire made-in-India small-capacity range sits just above the cut-off, the math wasn’t hard to do.
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Engineering Tweaks, Not a Ground-Up Redesign
The new 350cc engine won’t be built from scratch. It’s essentially the existing 399cc single-cylinder, liquid-cooled unit with a reduced bore to bring displacement under the magic number. Stroke is expected to stay the same. The result will be a modest power drop — somewhere in the region of 3 to 5hp — from the current motor’s output of 40hp and 37.5 Nm. In everyday riding terms, that’s unlikely to be noticeable.
Entire 400cc Lineup Set for Downsizing
The Speed 400, Speed T4, Scrambler 400X and Thruxton 400 are all in line for the displacement chop — that’s every Triumph you can currently walk into an Indian showroom and buy. What happens to the 400cc versions after that is anyone’s guess. Some may quietly disappear from Indian forecourts while continuing to be built for overseas buyers, but nothing official has come from either Bajaj or Triumph on that front yet.
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Pricing Advantage and Competitive Implications
Pricing hasn’t been announced, but the tax advantage is significant enough to potentially push these bikes meaningfully below their current on-road figures — putting Triumph in much sharper competition with Royal Enfield’s 350cc range.
Bajaj is also said to be considering the same displacement strategy for the KTM 390 range and its own Dominar 400 and NS400Z, though timelines for those remain unconfirmed.
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