Hero scooter sales are at a five-year low despite biggest network, new products, good pricing and continuous focus…
At one end Hero is left puzzled over the continuation of its bread and butter 97 cc Splendor’s engine and at the other it is facing acute drop in its scooter sales. Hero is down to a paltry scooter market share of only 8 percent according to the sales data of the first six months of this financial year. This is its worst performance in the last five-six years.
Hero Scooter Sales
Suzuki Motorcycles, which is nowhere in contention in terms of dealership network, has outrun Hero MotoCorp in scooter sales in the first half of this fiscal. Suzuki registered total sales of 3.42 Lakh scooters which is 17 percent higher than its own tally in the corresponding period last year (H1 2018 – 2.92 Lakh units). On the other hand, Hero managed to sell only 2.49 Lakh units – a whopping drop of 36 percent over last year (when it sold 3.91 lakh units).
This is despite the fact that Hero has tried venturing in the 125cc segment with the cost-effective Destini 125, which was recently followed by Maestro Edge 125, which became the first fuel injected scooter in India. It also sells the 110cc Maestro Edge and Duet in the market. It also updated its Pleasure with its 110cc indigenous engine (so far Pleasure ran on the 102cc engine which Honda ditched long back from its arsenal) few months back.
With the biggest sales network in the country, Hero already has an advantage over its rivals but despite that it has seen this continuous fall which should be extremely worrying for the brand. To aggravate things, that 36 percent drop in volumes is the highest among all the major scooter selling brands in India.
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Honda continues to rule the roost with a market share of 55 percent, followed by TVS at 19 percent and Suzuki rising to the third place with a share of almost 11 percent, in the scooter segment.
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The question, then, is – With such troubled times, will Hero be able to sustain its number one position in the market in the months to come…?
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Source: Money Control
