TVS banks on Jupiter for bigger market share in scooter segment

Company expects to grow by 20% during the forthcoming festive season, hopes the healthy monsoon will open up sales which were impacted by severe drought last year

With the launch of its new scooter Jupiter, Chennai based TVS Motor Company is eying bigger market share of this market, targeting up to 18 per cent of the total sales.

Priced at Rs 44, 200(ex-showroom Delhi), the company targets to sell 10,000 Jupiters per month.

It is capable of producing 20,000 units of the scooters in a month at its Hosur factory in Tamil Nadu. Currently, it holds market share of 14 per cent.

Commenting on this, J S Srinivasan, vice president, sales, TVS Motors said," The Indian two-wheeler industry has been witnessing a 14 per cent growth. We have seen scooters growing more than motorcycles but that does not mean there is a decline in motorcycle sales. It is rather postponment of buying that has impacted motorcycle sales. There has been a fundamental shift and of course economic conditions which are responsible for growth of scooter segment. 55 per cent of our sales come from rural segment while 45 per cent is contributed by tire-II and other markets.. We expect to grow by 20 per cent during the forthcoming festive season and hope the healthy monsoon will open up sales which were impacted by the severe drought last year."

He added, "The current market share of TVS in scooter segment is 14 percent, we expect it to be around 18 per cent by the end of this fiscal across the country. As announced by our chairman, we are looking at launching a product every quarter. We have the ability to ramp up production at our Hosur and Mysore facilities. We are planning to take the Wego and Jupiter production capacity to almost 30,000 units and combined we can take production to 80,000 units."

TVS is selling 50,000 motorcyles, 65,000 mopeds and 36000 scooters domestically every year.

The exports which includes all the products stand at 1,50000 units annually. The company will also look to export Jupiter to markets like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Apart from Jupiter, TVS has range of scooters like TVS Wego, TVS Scooty Pep+ and TVS Scooty Streak.

According to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), scooters sales rose by an annual 14.3 per cent to 780,000 although two-wheeler sales as a whole declined by 1 per cent  to 3.49 million units in the first quarter ended June.