Inside Ninety One Cycles’s premium bike dream
The seven-year-old company has plans to manufacture premium bicycles in India at affordable prices. Can it take on bigger, established players?
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Editor's note: The year was 2015. Brothers Sachin Chopra and Vishal Chopra had returned to India after spending a decade in the US, where they worked in private equity, finance, semiconductors and tech. Besides the changes in culture and weather, they noticed a lifestyle shift as well—a lot more Indians were riding bicycles. But other than the established companies like Hero, Avon and TI pushing their bikes, there wasn’t anything special happening in the space. “The bicycle space was still boring, the same old players and designs. We wanted to change that,” says Vishal. The brothers saw an opportunity. They believed the bicycles on offer could be more fun and better. With their engineering background, they aimed to transform what they call a “stagnant” market. And so Ninety One Cycles was born. “We wanted to do what Dyson did with vacuum cleaners. We wanted to become the Dyson of bicycles,” say the brothers. Dyson, a company founded in the UK, revolutionized the otherwise staid vacuum cleaning industry with its high-tech products and aggressive marketing. Based in Ahmedabad, Ninety One Cycles (incorporated as …
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