Exclusive: TVS Motor sells a million scooters in India for first time ever in a fiscal

With scooterisation taking firm grip in the country, TVS Motor Co makes strong gains. Jupiter biggest growth driver even as the recently launched NTorq joins the company's scooter stable.

By Amit Panday

15 Mar 2018

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The 110cc Jupiter scooter is the single biggest contributor to TVS Motor's scooter sales.

Achieving a historic milestone for the first time ever, TVS Motor Company has registered sales of more than one million scooters in India during the 11-month period of the ongoing financial year 2017-18.

The Chennai-based manufacturer, which appears to be on a roll with a series of new product launches in the market over the past four months including its first-ever 125cc scooter NTorq 125 in February 2018, has reported total domestic scooter sales of 1,000,801 units during the April 2017-February 2018 period. This marks an impressive growth of 34.53 percent YoY (April 2016-February 2017: 743,910).

Jupiter packs a punch
TVS Motor’s 110cc Jupiter scooter is the single biggest contributor to this growth, helping propel the company’s scooter sales to new heights. Let’s take a look at the average scooter dispatches made by TVS Motor in the domestic market per month. This number stands at about 90,981 units for each month during the 11-month period of this fiscal. The average monthly sale of TVS Motor’s bestselling scooter – Jupiter – stands at about 68,207 units (April 2017-January 2018). This clearly indicates that the 110cc Jupiter contributes to about 75 percent of TVS Motor’s total scooter sales in India.

Seen over an 11-year period, the company has taken long strides in its scooter sales. In 2007-08, when it sold 250,156 scooters to the ongoing fiscal, when it crossed the million mark, the company is riding the wave of scooterisation in the country, particularly in the past three years. Sales accelerated in 2014-15, when TVS sold a total of 684,569 scooters, a year-on-year increase of 49.80 percent. In the next fiscal, sales rose to 773,597 units (+13%) and then to 826,291 units in 2016-17. The TVS Jupiter scooter model (all variants put together) sold 613,817 units and 537,451 units in FY2016-17 and FY2015-16 respectively. The ongoing fiscal (for the first 11 months of the year) sees the company record handsome growth of 21.11 percent.

While the TVS Jupiter continues to be a strong pillar of growth for the company, TVS is targeting sales of an additional 200,000 units of its recently launched NTorq 125 scooter between February 2018 to January 2019. This clearly underlines TVS Motor’s aggressive strategy of gaining additional market share in the booming scooter segment.

SIAM industry vehicle sales data indicates that the company’s market share in the scooter segment has increased from 14.53 percent to 16.14 percent during the 11-month period of April-February 2018 of the ongoing fiscal.

Meanwhile, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, the scooter segment leader, remains stable on its turf and its market share has marginally increased from 57.34 percent to 57.35 percent during the same period. While TVS Motor’s scooter dispatches has just crossed the million-unit milestone in the 11-month period, Honda has already sold more than 3.5 million scooters during the same period.

For the April 2017-February 2018 period, total scooter market sales stand at 6,201,896 units, up 21.81 percent YoY. The scooter segment contributed 33.61 percent of the overall two-wheeler sales in India during the same period. Autocar Professional estimates that the scooters may ring in total sales of close to 6,766,000 units by the end of this fiscal. FY2018-19 is estimated to see further penetration of the scooter demand propelling its growth across India.