The arrival of the festival season has revved up the Indian motorcycle market that has been lying low for some time due to continued sluggish demand. But Bajaj Auto and Hero Honda have announced festival packages and discounts to lure customers, TVS Motors has refused to react and join them in doling out freebies to push numbers.

Undeterred by Bajaj Auto’s announcement of a Rs 4,000 price cut on its entry-level model ‘Platina’ and Hero Honda’s Rs 2,020 off on its CD Deluxe, TVS has said that it will ‘not go for any price reduction’ on its ‘Star’ bike that competes with the two models.

?There will be no price cut at all on TVS bikes and we are also not offering anything special with our models. We feel that these schemes do not have any effect on bike sales overall,? TVS Motors senior vice-president for sales and service RCM Chandramouli told FE. He said while 20% of potential customers could be attracted by such schemes, the rest 80% of the market is completely unaffected by such discounts and schemes.

Abdul Majeed, partner at Pricewaterhouse who tracks the automobile sector, said that discounts will be an added incentive for customers to buy vehicles.

?Generally people do buy vehicles at this auspicious time. But we should not forget that demand is sluggish this time. Thus, discounts do attract customers to decide on a particular model,? he said, though adding that the value of a product was also crucial.

Chandramouli said TVS was gearing up for the launch of its much-controversial 125-cc twin spark Flame, for which Bajaj Auto had accused it of IPR infringement. The company had said that it will launch it by October-end. Pulled down by high interest rates and credit squeeze from financiers, the domestic motorcycle market has fallen by as much as 15% in the first half of this fiscal at 27.2 lakh units against 32.09 lakh units in the same period last year. The fall is led by a big slump in demand for TVS and Bajaj Auto, even though market leader Hero Honda somehow managed to stabilise numbers in the last two months. For TVS, the fall in the first half has been a steep 45% as its volumes fell to 2,44,434 units against 4,48,726 units in April-September ?06.