Baby Ninja here next week!

Definitely the most eagerly awaited bike and also India's first true-blue quarter-litre motorcycle, the Ninja has a lot riding on it in order to propel the Indian two-wheeler industry towards large capacity performance-oriented motorcycles. Equipped with cycle-parts usually seen on large capacity superbikes, the Ninja 250R will offer Indian bikers a taste of superbike performance. This bike was shown by Bajaj Auto at the 2007 Auto Expo in New Delhi and back then it created quite a lot of stir in the Indian market.

After almost two years of wait, finally the Ninja 250R is all set to make its debut at Bajaj Auto's Akurdi plant next week. There are no technical changes made to the Ninja 250R and it will be imported from Thailand as Completely Knocked Kits (CKD). The bikes will be assembled at the Bajaj Auto's Chakan plant and they will be sold through the elite ProBiking showrooms across major cities. The only visible changes on the bike include a matte-black exhaust pipe and the black-coloured rear tail unit with a green pillion seat, unlike the black tail unit seen on the international model.

Bajaj Auto has been highly secretive about the bike's pricing and it is very difficult right now to quote the correct pricing. However, since it is a CKD import, the duties slapped on the Kawasaki will be lesser in comparison to duties levied on direct a CBU import - which means that the Ninja won't be exorbitantly priced for India.