Bajaj Sales In Sri Lanka (And Not In China)
Bajaj flying a kite in Colombo.
If you’re going to buy a three-wheeler, it’s better to go Bajaj. Those noisy Piaggio shitboxes are bigger but polluting and, as mentioned, noisy. Recently tuk-tuk duties have gone up and Bajaj has cut prices 10% as a response (motorbikes are down 14%), both depending. What I found more interesting was that Sri Lanka actually accounts for a big chunk of the huge Indian company’s sales. 17-18% of exports go to Sri Lanka and 5-7% of total sales are from here. Apparently after the duties went up (by 50-60%) sales went to zero and the company had to cut prices to respond. So, thank you Bajaj, for helping our government cover its fiscal deficit (Economic Times).
One place I’ve never seen a Bajaj is China. It’s not that they don’t have three-wheelers, but they seem more like tricycles than trishaws. There is, for example, this thing with a propellor below (why?). There’s power in the trinity, but that’s still one market Bajaj has yet to tap. I’ve included a small gallery of Chinese three wheeler styles here, just because.
Ready to fly
Rep’ing the PRC
The classic tricycle, expanded
Posted on Friday, July 6th, 2012 in Business, China, India, transport.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
India mainly exports raw materials to China.
Aye, the Chinese don’t really do imports, at least not unless they are raw materials. In that respect they have gone from a positive influence on the global standard of living and supporting low inflation to a parasite on the world economy: utilising exploitable cheap labour to undercut others, using that money to loan to those countries to propagate consumption and therefore more exports and at the same time imposing unilateral restrictions to prevent Chinese companies from facing competition at home. The Germans are an export-led economy because of excellence, the Chinese (largely) because of exploitation. That said, they are very successful at playing to their strengths.
If the Chinese need a trishaw, they’ll make one. Probably even copy Bajaj’s design:
http://picker.typepad.com/legalinfrastructure/2011/12/chinas-auto-industry-copycat-or-outfoxing-the-competition.html
One thing’s for sure: they aren’t likely to import it.
Three-wheelers are a sign of 3rd worldness and under developness. The more 3-wheelers in a country the more underdeveloped the people and country. Sri Lanka has over 4 lack of these useless shitboxes. So I guess that shows where we are in the scheme of things.