Honda Activa is bestseller in India, grabs 59 percent market share

The Honda Activa which had intermittent stints at the top of the sales chart last year has sealed its place as the country’s most sought after two wheeler in 2016. In the first 6 months of the calendar year, the automatic scooter managed to consistently outsell the incumbent Hero Splendor.

The strong sales of Activa have helped the Japanese brand garner an enviable market share of 59% in the country’s scooter segment.

In comparison, Hero Motorcorp controls 17% of the scooter market while TVS claims 14%. In the quarter that ended in June, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India sold 7.97 lakh units of scooter, a Y0Y growth of 28%. HMSI’s scooter sales in last fiscal stood at 2.78 million units at a growth rate of 11.5%.

The growth rate for this year is expected to be even better since the capacity crunch has been eliminated by the new Gujarat scooter plant. The facility which currently runs at 50% would give the company a total installed production capacity of nearly 6 million units per annum (across all its units).

Apart from the hot-selling Honda Activa series, models like Dio (average monthly sales of over 30,000 units) and Aviator (around 20,000 units per month) too are driving the growth. Analysts estimate that the market share of scooters in the Indian market is expected to grow to 45% in 2019-20 from last fiscal’s 34%. Honda Activa is expected to stay on top of its game for the coming years.

This article first appeared in Rushlane.com