Early monthly motorcycle sales data for March sharply illustrate the ongoing ascendancy of wholly-owned Japanese brands over local manufacturers in the huge but troubled Indian domestic market.
The country’s largest indigenous and biggest overall powered two-wheeler producer, former Honda joint-venture partner Hero MotoCorp, reported a 11.36 per cent sales decline at 468,283 units in March. And for its full financial year to 31 March, Hero sales fell by about two per cent to approximately 6.1 million units. Similarly, India’s third-largest native manufacturer TVS Motor — which respectively now ranks fourth overall behind Hero, Honda and Bajaj, saw its March domestic sales drop by 10.89 per cent to 143,239 units. TVS is a former Suzuki JV partner.
In stark contrast, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India boasted a 15 per cent growth in sales for March at 252,773 units. Total sales for the year were up by 31 per cent to 2,754,685 units. Yamaha was on a roll too, albeit on a smaller scale, with its India Yamaha Motor subsidiary reporting a 20 per cent domestic sales rise to 35,782 units in March.
However, Hero is still ignoring a pronounced swing away from purely Indian-conceived products, preferring to blame its misfortunes primarily on market stagnation rather than changing consumer tastes for perceptibly superior foreign technology and production quality. This has been gathering pace ever since the Japanese began to focus on wholly-owned operations in India rather than joint ventures.
“The industry continues to reel under the adversities of persistent inflation, firm interest rates, rising fuel prices and negative consumer sentiment,” commented Hero MotoCorp senior vice president for marketing and sales Anil Dua.