While helmets have been designed for safety purpose, as time goes by, they are evolving into something which is much more than a safety gear. “Helmets are now going to become an electronic gadget,” Sidhartha Bhushan Khurana, Managing Director of Studds told Express Drives. The company is working on integrating helmets with new technologies. According to Khurana, Studds will be bringing helmets with integrated cameras. The helmets with integrated cameras would help many to drive safely as well as take pictures/ record more easily. Apart from this, the company is likely to include bone-conduction technology in its product portfolio as well.
Explaining the bone-conduction technology, Khurana said that in bone-conduction technology, there are no speakers or whatever speakers there are, they don’t emit any sound. They produce vibrations that further vibrate your bones. The vibrations are calibrated by your nervous system and then translated into a sound system. This allows users to actually hear music without music being played. “We are working on this bone-conduction technology in helmets,” Studds MD said. The helmets will be available for domestic as well as international markets. However, the company did not reveal the expected price range and the timeline for these products. “Our R&D team has been working on it and we will only be able to comment on the timeline closer to date,” said Khurana. The company currently has a product portfolio that is Bluetooth enabled.
Meanwhile, the company is ramping up its production for helmets. With the operations commencing for the 4th plant by March-end, the company’s production capacity will be doubled. “The existing two plants for motorcycle helmets produce 6.5 million units per annum currently and the new facility coming up has a capacity of 6 million,” he added. This new plant will cater to the production of its premium channel SMK as well as the helmets with new technologies.
SMK, however, has not been able to cope up with the demand in India. The company’s emphasis is still on exports for the brand. For Studds, exports are growing faster than the sales in the domestic market. However, with the new stringent safety norms in the domestic market, Khurana said, the replacement market and the new market volumes are pegged to grow from 2 crore and 3 crore helmets to 3.5 crore and 4.5 crore helmets, respectively in the next three years. Hence, the sales are likely to pick up and the production from its new plant will help the company cater to this increase in demand.
