With robust growth in its motorcycle sales over the past few months, Honda threatens to dislodge Bajaj, which has been struggling with falling sales, from its Number Two position by volumes in the bike market.
Even as Bajaj Auto is revamping its plans with new launches, Honda has been steadily increasing its bike volumes to reduce the sales gap with the former.
Aided by new launches and expansion of dealerships, Honda posted 21 per cent rise in its total bike sales at 9.07 lakh units during the first-half of this fiscal, while Bajaj saw its bike volumes fall by 12 per cent at 9.52 lakh units. So, Bajaj’s sales are higher by just 45,000 units than Honda’s as of September 30, 2014. But, in a year-ago period, Baja’s bike sales were higher by 3.27 lakh units.
In the 110cc-and-below segment, Honda increased its volumes to about three lakh units from 2.55 lakh units a year-ago, while Bajaj has seen a drop to 4.58 lakh units from 5.75 units.
In the above-110cc-to-125cc segment, Honda surpassed the sales of Hero with 31 per cent rise at 4.60 lakh units and became leader in the category. Bajaj saw a significant drop in sales to 82,269 units from 1.57 lakh units a year ago.
The festive season has also brought cheer to Honda to support its dream ride in two wheeler sales. It has claimed to achieved highest ever Dhanteras sales of 1.65 lakh units when compared to 78,000 units last year. It also saw a strong rise in sales of its dream series bikes (comprise Dream Yuga, Dream Neo and CD 110 Dream) with sales of 45,000 units.
With current growth rate, Honda may surpass the sales of Bajaj in the next few months and become the Number Two player in bike segment. Honda is already a leader in scooter segment with about 55 per cent share. Hero is the leader in bike segment with a wide margin.
With festive boost, Bajaj sold more bikes than Honda in September this year though its monthly sales were lower than volumes of September 2013.
