The scooter industry has come of age, literally. From the Bajaj Vespa and the Lambretta some 30 years back to the Hero Honda Pleasure, the Kinetic Flyte or the Suzuki Access now, the industry in India has passed one milestone after another. There were, of course, the ubiquitous Bajaj Chetak, the LML NV in the ?80s, the TVS Scooty in the early ?90s, and the Honda Activa in 2001, that were harbingers of modern two-wheeler dreams.
Trends past and present make evident that scooters just can?t be kept off roads in India. Be it the steep fall in the segment after the introduction of the 100cc motorcycles in the early ?80s or a gradual shift from a two-stroke scooter to a four-stroke one, the segment may have had a rough ride, but nothing could stop its revival. It is now growing at a compound annual growth rate of 15-17% over the last few years.
This is indeed significant keeping in mind the fact that the segment had actually faded away after the introduction of higher fuel-efficient motorcycles. With just a few motorcycles like the Rajdoot, the Yezdi and the Bullet existing almost three decades back, the scooter segment was commanding a robust market share of 80%. But gradually, it started losing out to a commuter vehicle that was giving almost double the mileage and this had led to a fall in the market share of scooters to as low as just 8% in 2000-2001. But, new technology products from Honda and the brand value attached to them helped the segment revive. Since then, there has been no looking back. Today, the segment accounts for 20% of the total two-wheeler sales in the country.
?The booming economy has led to new trends. With a high degree of urbanisation, the growing number of nuclear families and more females going out to work, a majority of the old-age people and both working and college-going females now prefer convenient products like automatic or ungeared scooters that can be used by all members of a family. This has led to the boom in the segment,? feels NK Rattan, vice-president, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Ltd (HMSI). Honda, which pioneered the concept of the four-stroke un-geared scooters in India in 2001, is the largest scooter-selling company in India. According to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the company sold 43,540 scooters in the 75cc-125cc categories in December 2007 against 36,348 units during the same month in 2006, a growth of 19.78%.
Over the years, the segment also witnessed a shift from the geared to the ungeared scooter, largely due to the ease of handling the latter version. ?Earlier, scooters were largely driven by males. But, eventually, with a shift in the mindset from motorcycles that were largely considered as commuter products to scooters emerging as family vehicles, two-wheeler majors came up with gearless scooters to meet the comfort and convenience requirements of the people,? says Atul Gupta, vice- president, Suzuki Motorcycle India Ltd. The company has recently forayed into the scooter segment in October with the launch of the Access and had sold 14,000 units until January. Currently, the Honda Eterno is the only scooter in the geared category and, of a total of 80,000 scooters that are sold in India every month, about 11,000 are geared.
?Cities where distances are not huge, where public transport is not so well developed and where people seek value for money, these scooters are doing good business,? adds S Srinivas, general manager (scooters), TVS Motors. The company started manufacturing scooters in 1993 with the TVS Scooty and is currently selling on an average 23,000 units of the Scooty Pep and the Scooty Teen in a month. The success story of scooters has become more pronounced at a time when the motorcycle industry has been declining due to high interest rates against vehicle loans and unavailability of finance. ?Scooters have a very negligible market in rural India unlike motorcycles that are in huge demand there. With higher delinquencies in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat, banks have either partially or completely withdrawn from these markets, resulting in a dip in sales. This is contrary to scooters that are in demand in the urban and semi-urban areas or A-class and B-class cities, and where finances continue to be available. Hence, the segment has been witnessing a positive growth over the whole of last year,? adds Gupta.
The scooter sales in the domestic market grew 9.82% in December 2007 to 77,494 units against 70,568 units during the same month in 2006. The segment is set to get a further boost with the entry of many unorganised players and a continuous upgrade in technology. ?The rising number of electric scooters as well as availability of cheap vehicles imported from China will lead to further growth in the segment,? feels Srinivas of TVS.