Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) has announced that its Activa automatic scooters has notched a new milestone of 15 million (1.5 crore) cumulative sales, and is India’s first scooter to reach this landmark. Minoru Kato, president and CEO, HMSI, rolled out the landmark 1,50,00,000th Activa from the assembly line of the company’s scooter-only plant in Gujarat.
Commenting on the landmark, Minoru Kato said, “Globally developing markets similar to India, especially Thailand and Indonesia, have already shifted to scooterisation. Now, India is getting scooterised like never before. In just seven years, the scooter segment’s contribution to total industry has doubled from 16 percent (in 2009-10) to 32 percent (in 2016-17). Leading this trend is the Activa which single-handedly reactivated the declining scooter segment way back in 2001 and become the No. 1 selling two-wheeler, both in India and the world. Honda believes that there is huge future potential for scooterisation, more so in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns.”
Activa’s ride to 15 million sales
Launched in 2001, the Activa sold 55,000 units in its debut year. In just three years, it soon became the leader in the automatic scooter segment. By 2012-13, sales had crossed the 10 lakh (1m) mark annually but were still behind India’s largest selling two-wheeler (the Hero Splendor) by a sizeable gap of 8,73,000 units.
Over the next four years, Activa sales more than doubled from 12.05 lakh units in FY2012-13 to 27.59 lakh units in FY2016-17. Now, for the first time in 17 years, the Activa has overtaken all motorcycles to become India’s leading two-wheeler in 2016-17 and leads by a comfortable margin of 2,09,000 units over its nearest competition.
Elaborating on the continuing success of the Activa, Yadvinder Singh Guleria, senior vice-president (Sales & Marketing), HMSI said, “The Activa’s phenomenal success and market leadership is in its continuous evolution ahead of times. In 2001, the Activa was launched with CLIC mechanism, tyres with patented tuff-up tube, and a full metal body powered by the automatic 102cc engine. In 2009, it became the industry’s first scooter to come with a Combi-Brake System (CBS) with equaliser (nearly a decade before CBS is set to be mandatory in two-wheelers by 2019), a bigger and more powerful 110cc engine, convenience of tubeless tyres and a completely new design. By 2013, the Activa’s got Honda Eco Technology (HET) which took its mileage into the league of commuter motorcycles. In 2015, the third-generation Activa 3G rolled out, followed by the BS-IV and AHO Activa 4G this year with a convenient mobile charging port.
Azaman Chothia
Vishal Venugopal
