Audi, the luxury car maker brand of Volkswagen group has bough Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A (an Italian Motorcycle brand) for a whooping amount of 860 Million Euros or 1.12 Billion US Dollars which is approximately Rs. 5600 Crore. There have been a lot of speculations about the some Indian brands including Mahindra and Mahindra, Hero MotoCorp etc. interested in buying Ducati, while the global names like BMW and Volkswagen have also been talked about trying to crack the deal. Finally, Audi (Volkswagen’s group luxury car maker) has finally cracked the deal and is taking over Ducati brand from its owners Investindustrial.
Ducati brings with it a rich heritage of engineering design, high performance engines and a globally renowned brand name which will benefit Volkswagen group in longer run. Ducati is under some financial troubles which will get over as Volkswagen group can fund the Ducati’s operations and help it build better products in future with its rich heritage of automobile know-how. Ducati will benefit by getting back on track while Volkswagen group will benefit from the progress of Ducati brand in a longer run. The existing network of Audi will help promote and sell Ducati brand in a much more efficient manner and will help with the overall operations of Ducati.
image – Ducati Motorcycle and Audi Car
From a pure business point of view, Volkswagen group holds multiple brands in multiple markets of the world who do good in their own product niche. The addition of Ducati to those brands makes a lot of business sense for VW Group as well as Ducati. This also helps to gain some diversification in the portfolio of VW group. With its reach through Audi sales and distribution network in almost all major automobile markets of the world, Audi will be able to accelerate the sales of Ducati Motorcycles as Ducati also represents similar values of premiumness and performance as Audi cars do. We will keep an eye on how it impacts the Ducati Motorcycles sales and service network on the ground.
Ducati Motorcycles are is sold globally and are manufactured at headquarters in Bologna and at second Ducati factory in Thailand. Asia is a strong growth market for Ducati in the times to come as the demand for sports motorcycles in counties like India, China, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia is rising gradually and it is expected to help Ducati grow its revenues in coming years. Ducati has about 1100 employees world over and has sold about 42,000 motorcycles globally in the year 2011. Ducati was founded in 1926 but it started manufacturing Motorcycles in the year 1949, prior to it, it built parts for radios. Ducati is also quite active in motorcycle racing for decades and is a very well known and renowned name in motorsports and has won several titles in MotoGP racing numerous times. After its take over by Audi, Ducati and Mercedes AMG collaboration has come to an end.
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