For two months in a row, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) has been selling over two lakh units of its scooters led by the popular Activa brand. While July sales were at an all-time high of 2.23 lakh units, August was 2.18 lakh scooters, indicating that this level is here to stay.

Two-wheel wave

Scooters already account for a fourth of two-wheeler sales in India with HMSI head and shoulders above the rest. The two immediate challengers are TVS Motor and Hero MotoCorp but their sales are still in the 65,000 units-per-month zone which puts HMSI comfortably ahead.

This gap will only widen when the company’s Gujarat plant comes on-stream in the second half of 2015-16. With an annual capacity of 1.2 million units, it has been earmarked for scooter production and will enhance HMSI’s monthly output to over 3.3 lakh units.

By this time, TVS and Hero along with Yamaha, Suzuki and Mahindra will also have hiked their capacities and the share of scooters is expected to touch over 33 per cent of total two-wheeler sales in India. This is only inevitable as more women opt for this mode of transport while public transport continues to be woefully inadequate.

Aiming higher

HMSI’s motorcycle numbers have been hovering around the 1.5 lakh unit mark over the last two months. The renewed thrust on rural India could see this figure gradually increase even while Hero continues to be the market leader thanks largely to its Splendor and Passion brands.

HMSI has made it clear that it is eyeing the top slot in the Indian two-wheeler industry over the next two years. The Gujarat plant will see its annual volumes inch towards six million units of which scooters alone will account for nearly four million units. HMSI could add at least one more facility once its motorcycle sales start gathering momentum in rural India. Till then, it is going to be scooters all the way.

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