Scooters ride over bikes

Chennai: While the macho mean machines are still around to humour boys, it is actually the suave, automatic, self-start scooters that are ruling the auto sales chart now. Thanks to growing urbanisation and increasing traffic congestion, scooters are now becoming the best choice for short commute for the entire family.

According to a report of ICICI Securities, FY 14 saw automobile industry accruing an overall growth of 4 per cent, lower than the initial expectations of 8-10 per cent.

However, in volume terms, scooters was the only segment that bucked the trend to grow at 23 per cent.

“This is because the overall base is very small,” said Kumar Kandaswamy, senior director, Deloitte, India.

“Scooters are becoming increasingly a hub and spoke product for people living in suburban and downtown areas to beat the traffic or for intra-city commute. With most cities growing horizontally where there is poor public transport, this becomes a handy co-usage family vehicle at an affordable budget,” he added.

“Scooter market in the country has evolved over a decade,” said Y.S. Guleria, VP-sales and marketing, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India, the market leaders in the automatic scooter category. “Though earlier scooters were only for men, Honda revolutionized the segment with improved mileage, better comfort and styling, ease of use with auto gears and self-start features as a women’s product,” he added.

However, with the segment registering a consistent year-on-year growth of 20 per cent, it has started to attract other motorcycle brands who are badly hit by auto slowdown.

Most major bike brands including Honda, Yamaha, TVS, Suzuki, Hero, Mahindra etc are now out with their scooters to garner their share of this two-wheeler pie.
With over 20 scooter models in the market today, there is a clear shift in brand communication of this product from that of a lady-driven to that of a style statement of urban youth in the age group of 18-22 years including students, two-wheeler beginners and young professionals. This is mainly to ensure that the customer base is widened, said Karvy auto analyst Mitul Shah.

Most scooter ads these days have equal number of male and female models. “It is like the big brands giving permission to drive scooters, telling that it’s not a girly thing anymore,” said Mr Kandasamy.