Honda Activa outdoing Hero Splendor in the Indian market, when it last happened, was said to be a fluke or a one-off occurrence but the scooter has done it again in the month of July, meaning it was neither a fluke nor some miscalculation by the statisticians. For years now, Hero Splendor has been the superstar of the Indian two wheeler market, closely followed by the Honda Activa. However, the Japanese automaker has trumped all its rivals and promoted the scooter segment really well, succeeding in doing the unthinkable, beating the flagship product of the number one firm in the Indian two-wheeler market.
The instance of Honda Activa beating the Hero Splendor is the third one in the past year, making for a significant achievement. Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India is a company that has risen to the fore in the past few years, reinventing itself in all aspects and overtaking bigwig Bajaj Auto in domestic sales. Though that might be largely due to Bajaj’s non-presence in the scooter segment, there is no taking away from Honda the hard work and strategic brilliance it has shown.
To be fair, Honda Activa has been present in the Indian market since 2001, spending over a decade of fighting competition, moving as industry progress and keeping up with sales figures. The latest version of Honda Activa, the 125 cc model rendered sales of 191883 units as compared to 165779 units of the Hero Splendor in the month of July. Surprisingly and amazingly, the total sales of motorcycles by Honda in the month of July was 148012, which means that the Honda Dream Yuga, Twister, Unicorn, Trigger, Shine and Dream Neo combined cannot match up to the figure of Activa alone.
As discussed above, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India has badly affected the sales of Bajaj Auto, trumping the firm in domestic market last month as the latter sold only 125053 units, which is way below the figure attained by the former. The bright spot for Bajaj Auto is that though its market in India is not up to the mark, the firm is making significant inroads in international markets, performing exceptionally well abroad ahead of all others in the Indian circuit. Bajaj Discover has not been able to deliver it for the manufacturer and unfortunately, Hero Splendor alone defeated the entire sales of the former’s complete bike portfolio. Honda, on the other hand, is getting long waiting periods for the Activa owing to the high demanding, which has compelled the Japanese company to establish the world’s largest scooter plant in India.
