Hero Registers Shocking 88% Drop in Scooter Sales in Jan

Hero scooter sales for the complete fiscal so far have also registered a major fall and it is down to the fifth spot in January sales!

Hero MotoCorp was the third largest scooter manufacturer till last year, behind Honda and TVS. It should have been doing at least better than TVS considering its mammoth reach but that is not the only bad news for the company. It has been overtaken by a much smaller Suzuki (in terms of reach) in India and there is a considerable distance between them now.

Hero tried to fight back by introducing newer products like Duet 125, Maestro Edge 125 and all new Pleasure. However, things just do not seem to be working. Particularly, its sales for the month of January 2020 stand at just 6140 units (yes we haven’t missed any digit here), as compared to 53,511 units it managed in January 2019 – which is a drop of whopping 88 percent! There is no solace in exports as Hero is barely shipping 1000 odd units a month (of all the scooters combined).

The reason of this sharp fall is not known but it appears that this may have been done due to the production shift to Bharat Stage 6 compliant versions of these scooters. But if it is this reason than it is all the more worrying – it simply means that Hero did not plan its transition well and such a massive drop is big trouble for the brand which has not been able to make its mark in scooters so far. No other major manufacturer has culled its production/sales to these levels in this transition to BS6, so far.

In the overall scheme of things, Hero has lost 2.61 lakh units in this fiscal till now (April 2019 to January 2020) which corresponds to a drop of whopping 42 percent of its sales of the last year during the same period. What is more worrying for Hero is that it has lost despite various new launches.

Hero scooter sales
Hero consolidated its 125cc scooter range with Maestro Edge 125.

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Hero Scooter Sales – January 2020

TypeJan 2020Jan 2019Percent Change
Scooters416,5944,97,169-16.21
Motorcycles871,88610,27,766-15.17
Mopeds52,52572,593-27.64

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Now that Suzuki is a comfortable third in the list, Hero may have to fight out Yamaha even for the fourth spot in the times to come. It had a very comfortable lead of over 3.12 lakh units last year which has now dropped to about 1.35 Lakh units only!

Slowdown: 28.68 Lakh Less 2-Wheelers Sold in India This Year So Far

What is the issue that the brand is not able to address and why are buyers not preferring buying Hero’s scooters?