Women power pushes scooters ahead of motorbikes, Activa leads

Honda Activa displaced the two-decade-old market leader Hero’s Splendor motorcycle from the top slot in September. With this, ascooter emerged as the largest selling two-wheeler in a month,pipping all motorcycles in India for the first time in over a decade.

The Honda Activa found almost 142,000 takers in September surpassing the country’s long standing bestseller, Hero Splendor, which sold 124,217 units during the month, reported Hindustan Times.

In fact, scooters are the fastest growing segment of the Indian automotive market now and are taking on the mighty bikesthanks to rapid urbanisation, better urban infrastructure and an ever widening women customer base.

Scooter sales have clocked a growth rate of 26 percent in the past four years, compared with 15 percent for motorcycles. As many as 40 percent of first-time buyers of scooters arewomen.

“Scooter is a predominantly urban vehicle and women are a significant chunk of users. As urbanisation picks up and women exert their independence, sales would grow. Also many men in the 30-plus age group are now also looking at scooters,“Rakesh Batra, partner and national leader automotive practice, Ernst & Young, was quoted as saying in the HT report.

According to a report in The__Economic Times , in many significant markets such as Chandigarh, Imphal, Goa and Kerala,scooters already outsell bikes. In other cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune,robust growth over the years has helped scooters bridge the sales gap with bikes as more people choose the convenient mode of transport.

Rating agency Icra predicts thatdomestic two-wheeler industry volumes will remain flat in 2013-14.

In a report, the agency said that though the motorcycles segment, which accounts for over 70 percent of industry volumes, continued to remain the primary weak spot,the scooters segment, which accounts for 24 percent of industry volumes, has motored along at a brisk pace expanding by 16.6 percent on year in fiscal year 2013-14.