India’s scooter market registered record sales of 8.11 million units in FY2026 and within that, the top two players - Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) and TVS Motor Company are engaged in a heated battle. While HMSI remains unassailable as the longstanding segment market leader, the rapid advance of TVS, particularly over the past three fiscal years, has seen a dynamic shift in the market shares of the two companies.
While Honda is likely to continue to rule the roost, the market leader’s share has considerably reduced since FY2017. A decade ago, in FY2017, HMSI had a 57 percent market share, accounting for 3.18 million scooters of the 5.60 million units sold in India that fiscal.
Fast forward a decade, and Honda’s share of the now-much-larger scooter market, which clocked a record 8.11 million units, has reduced to 39 percent. The company dispatched 3.16 million units comprising 28,45,052 Activas (110cc/125cc), 3,13,924 Dios (110cc, 125cc), along with 2,773 QC1 and 318 Activa e: e-scooters. HMSI, which entered the EV market in early 2025, has not had much success with these two zero-emission models and has, till end-May 2026, dispatched 6,505 units of the Activa-e and QC1 and retailed 5,439 units.
As the decadal scooter wholesales data (shown above) reveals, HMSI maintained an over-55 percent market share from FY2017 to FY2020. The Covid pandemic-impacted FY2021 and FY2022, when all-India scooter sales dropped 11 percent YoY to their lowest level of 4 million units in the past decade, saw Honda’s share drop below the 50 percent mark for the first time in FY2022. Since then, as per SIAM’s wholesales numbers, there has been a consistent drop in HMSI’s share. In the first two months of FY2027, HMSI, with 5,02,190 units (up 16 percent YoY), had a scooter market share of 35 percent.
The same 10-year period under review has seen the No. 2 player, TVS Motor Co, which currently has the Jupiter, NTorq and Zest in its ICE scooter stable and the iQube and Orbiter EVs, gradually increase its volumes, albeit it is still some distance away from challenging Honda’s #1 position. A close look at the narrowing sales gap differential between these two brands reveals that from Honda’s truly massive 2.36 million-unit lead over TVS in FY2017, the gap has reduced to 8,59,366 units in FY2026, which, nevertheless, is a sizable one.
What the numbers also reveal is that while Honda’s scooter market share has slowly tapered down between FY2017 and FY2026, TVS Motor Co’s scooter market share has doubled. From over 14 percent in FY2017, TVS ended FY2026 with a 28 percent market share. While the Jupiter and NTorq have been the key drivers of this growth, TVS’ fortunes received a booster shot with its entry into the electric scooter market. Between FY2021 and April-May 2026, TVS has registered wholesales of over a million iQube and Orbiter e-scooters. At 10,18,395 units, these two EVs account for 10 percent of the 10 million (10,024,451 units) scooters that TVS has sold in the past decade.
TVS Motor Co’s rapid growth, particularly since FY2024, when it sold 1.4 million scooters, through to FY2026 with a record 2.30 million scooters, is the result of strong demand for both its ICE models and electric scooters.
In FY2026, TVS sold an additional 4,89,598 units, which has helped increase its India scooter market share to 28 percent from the 26 percent it had in FY2025. While the three petrol-engined scooters clocked 19,35,200 units, up 26 percent YoY, the two TVS e-scooters (3,67,501 units) posted 35 percent YoY growth (FY2025: 2,73,063 iQubes). This gave TVS an e-2W penetration level of 16 percent, improving on the 15 percent of FY2025. Last fiscal also saw TVS become the new e-2W market leader with a 24 percent retail share, unseating Ola Electric.
More recently, the Chennai-based manufacturer of the iQube and Orbiter EVs has become the second e-2W OEM in India, after Ola, to register 1 million unit sales, news exclusively broken by our sister publication, Autocar Professional.
As the TVS e-2W sales data table shown above depicts, of the cumulative 10,024,451 e-scooters sold from January 2020 till May 2026, 7.22 million units, or 72 percent, have been sold since April 2024, including a record 367,501 units in FY2026. This is reflected in the growing contribution of e-scooters to TVS’ overall scooter sales. From a minuscule 0.11 percent in FY2021, EV penetration touched 16 percent in FY2026 and, in the first two months of FY2027, it is over 19 percent, which also means that every fifth TVS scooter sold in the domestic market is a zero-emission model.
Of the 8.11 million scooters sold in FY2026, Honda and TVS together commanded a 67 percent share. Given the strong momentum in the current fiscal, FY2027 could likely see the 9-million milestone being breached for the first time.
Rishaad Mody
Ved Janve
Vishal Venugopal
