Hero challenges Honda's dominace in scooters

Hero which aims to expand capacity by 25% selling between 55,000 and 60,000 units of Pleasure and Maestro every month

The battle for dominance in the world’s largest motorcycle market between former partners Hero MotoCorp (HMCL) and Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) is set to spill over in the scooters segment with the Munjals’ promoted firm working at enhancing production capacity in the category by 25% to around 900,000 units per annum come January 2014.
 
Anil Dua, senior vice-president (sales & marketing), HMCL said, “We are selling between 55,000-60,000 units of Pleasure and Maestro every month. Right now demand is outstripping supply. To address capacity constraints, we are expanding monthly production capacity for scooters to 75,000 units from January next year.”

Hero MotoCorp currently rolls out 60,000 scooters per month from across its facilities in Gurgaon, Dharuhera and Hardwar. HMSI – with three products in its scooters portfolio Activa, Aviator and Dio – averages monthly sales of around 146, 862 units (April-Oct 2013) in the category.
 
The capacity expansion programme would enable the Munjals’ controlled Hero group to close the gap with the market leader HMSI which has already sold over a million gearless scooters between April and October this financial year. HMSI, which sold 1,028,037 scooters in the country till October this fiscal, has a market share of 51%. HMCL with sales of 393,468 units in the same period comes a distant second with market share of 19.6%.
 
To bridge the gap, Hero is looking at launching an upgraded version of scooter Pleasure and a special edition of the same model with integrated braking feature soon. The models have already been show to dealers at a meet in Macau recently.

“Our scooter sales are outgrowing the growth recorded in the industry. We will boost our portfolio with two new products at the auto show next year”, added Dua. Hero’ scooter sales have grown by 34% till Oct this fiscal as compared to the growth of 17.79% registered in the segment in the industry this year.
 
The scorching growth rates (17.79%) in the scooters’ segment as compared to increase in volumes by only 3.60% in the motorcycle market, has meant that all two-wheeler manufacturers have been working at gaining presence in the category. Scooters now contribute as much as 23.5% to total two-wheeler sales in the country. Yamaha forayed into the industry with Ray earlier this year, TVS too has launched a new model Jupiter.
 
HMSI, in the meantime, has been working at challenging the dominance of Hero in the motorcycle market. HMCL currently is the single largest two-wheeler manufacturer in India accounting for one out of every two motorcycles sold in the country.

Honda introduced entry-level model CB Dream in the middle of last year, followed by the 150 cc CB Trigger in May 2013. The product interventions have helped the company grow motorcycle sales by 36% 922,699 units between April and October this fiscal. Hero’s motorcycle sales have remained flat at 3,131,763 units in the same period.