Rahul Bajaj on Distribution Moats

Between the 1960s and the early 1990s Rahul Bajaj did not merely run an automobile company — he made the Bajaj Chetak scooter the visual shorthand for middle-class aspiration in post-independence India. Families booked the scooter and then waited, on average, ten years and sometimes as long as fifteen, because the rigid License Raj quota system capped monthly factory output well below genuine consumer demand.

The image of an Indian family of four balanced on a Bajaj scooter became the defining visual of the 1980s and 1990s urban middle class, used for school runs, commutes and weekend outings. The scooter was less a vehicle than a household asset class, treated as a prize possession and sometimes a dowry item, with resale values sustained by the unmet decade-long demand.