Bike majors’ stable missing festive fervour

The current festive season has so far failed to bring cheers for most of the country’s bike makers, with all major...

The current festive season has so far failed to bring cheers for most of the country’s bike makers, with all major companies registering insipid numbers.

While market leader Hero Honda posted its highest ever sales of 3,65,022 units in a single month during October, the growth over last year is only 0.5 per cent as compared with the previous year’s 20 per cent. The company had sold 3.63 lakh bikes in October 2006 compared with 3.02 lakh in Oct 2005. In fact, this October did not even match last month’s growth when it grew by 4.31 per cent at 3,14,567 units.

Similarly, its nearest rival Bajaj Auto (BAL) saw its bike sales skidding marginally by 1 per cent at 2,48,307 units compared with 2,51,022 units last October. This compares unfavourably with the growth last year at 22 per cent while indicating that its newly launched 125cc XCD has not been able to do the trick for the company. In 2005, Bajaj had grown by 43 per cent. It’s sales this year have fallen for nine consecutive months.

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Third-placed TVS Motors has registered the worst performance of the lot. At 67,752 units this year, sales have slid by 26.6 per cent over October last year. Last year TVS had witnessed a growth of 8 per cent during the month and in 2005 the growth was 14 per cent.

Sales in the two wheeler segment has been the hardest hit after interest rates were hiked by banks following RBI’s raising benchmark rates.