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Leading two-wheeler maker TVS Motor Company has achieved a significant milestone in scooters with its sales zooming past ‘million’ units in this fiscal.
TVS has become the second two-wheeler company in India to achieve an annual scooter volume of more than a million units after Honda, which is now the leader in this segment.
With higher-than-the-industry growth, total scooter sales of TVS Motor stood at 1,000,801 units during April 2017-February 2018 period compared with 743,910 units in the same period of the previous year. It ended 2016-17 with total sales of 826,291 units.
During the 11-month period of this fiscal, the scooter industry grew by 21 per cent at 6.2 million units. But TVS Motor’s scooter sales grew by about 35 per cent.
This fiscal has been a strong year for the company’s scooter growth. It clocked monthly sales of more than a lakh units for three months in a row – August, September and October, with its highest monthly scooter sales at 1.18 lakh units in September.
Top seller
TVS continues to be the only player that has a presence in the 90-cc sub-segment of scooters. It had three offerings in this sub-segment. But Teenz and Streak models have been discontinued, and it sells only the Scooty Pep+, which clocked total sales of 1.29 lakh units during the 11-month period against 91,558 units a year ago.
In the 90-110cc sub-segment, TVS offers – Jupiter, Zest and Wego, of which Jupiter continues to be the second-largest selling scooter in the country. In this segment, the company’s total sales stood at 871,497 units against 652,352 units. The company launched its new 125-cc scooter NTorq last month to further consolidate its position in the scooter market.
“Scooterisation has brought in special customer advantages that include customer convenience, flexibility and multiple use benefits. Also, in terms of fuel efficiency, scooters are also getting better and better. The feedback from consumers on TVS Motor’s offerings has been very heartening,” K N Radhakrishnan, President & CEO, TVS Motor, had told recently.
Scooterisation is catching up in rural areas too, as increasing number of people have started to prefer automatic scooters over motorcycles.
“While bikes were traditionally favoured because of their high fuel efficiency, scooters have narrowed the gap in the last few years due to improvements in technology that bridged the fuel efficiency gap with motorcycles, besides other benefits, according to Subrata Ray, Group Vice President – Corporate Ratings, Icra.
With favourable growth indicators for the scooter market, TVS Motor is expected to maintain a strong momentum in its sales in the near future.
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