Sales figures for november saw HMSI stage a quiet coup in the domestic two-wheeler market as TVS Motor was edged out of its number three perch. Can it claw its way back?
Appearances can be deceptive. They may conceal more than what they reveal. At first blush, the Chennai-based $2.2-billion TVS Motor Company’s 7.79% growth for the month of November 2011, in which it sold 1,50,406 two-wheelers, appears to be a fairly good showing, all the more so considering the macroeconomic challenges and the overall poor market sentiment in the Indian market. However, one only needs to look a bit deeper to arrive at a fuller picture. During the festive month of November, the two-wheeler industry grew by 25.27% and its (TVS) arch rivals like Hero MotoCorp and Honda Motorcycle & Scooters India (HMSI) managed to beat the industry trend by registering top-line growth of 27.28% and 59.04% respectively. For TVS, worse was yet to come. The month also saw it ceding its No. 3 slot in the two-wheeler market to HMSI, whose November sales logged 189,970 units.
Sure, the figures are for just the month of November. For the two contenders, the scales of fortune could tip either’s way and there could well be many a slip betwixt the cup and lip in the months ahead. For the past few years and till as late as November 2011, TVS was the third-largest two-wheeler manufacturer with a market share of 14.5%. The company sold 1,282,117 units as compared to the 1,228,987 units sold by HMSI during the April-November period. But the latest coup by HMSI has set tongues wagging. Will TVS be able to claw back the lost ground in the Indian two-wheeler market going ahead?
An e-mail sent to TVS Motor Company for its comments on this story did not elicit any response. But it is worth mentioning here that in October 2009, Business & Economy did a story discussing the fight for the #3 slot in the Indian two-wheeler industry between TVS and HMSI. As far back as two years ago, the magazine made a prediction that has come to be almost prophetic in hindsight. The story in question strongly made a case for TVS to pull up its socks or suffer the fate of watching HMSI vroom ahead. That fate has now come to haunt TVS. Considering the pace that HMSI has picked up of late, TVS will need to pull off a visceral performance and push sales aggressively to come back into the game with its honour intact.
Venu Srinivasan, the Chairman and Managing Director of TVS Motor Company, is not new to facing challenges. In fact, he has a reputation for thriving when the going gets tough. As a student of business management at Purdue University in the US, he spent a summer hawking the Good Book Bible in North Carolina. Despite being the grandson of the founder of the group (T.V. Sundaram Iyengar), Srinivasan started his career with the group as a grunt mechanic and put in a lot of elbow grease before moving up the ladder and becoming the CEO of Sundaram-Clayton (a TVS Group company) in 1979. And it was not before the mid-1980s that he rose to the top and was calling the shots at the two-wheeler manufacturer.
Appearances can be deceptive. They may conceal more than what they reveal. At first blush, the Chennai-based $2.2-billion TVS Motor Company’s 7.79% growth for the month of November 2011, in which it sold 1,50,406 two-wheelers, appears to be a fairly good showing, all the more so considering the macroeconomic challenges and the overall poor market sentiment in the Indian market. However, one only needs to look a bit deeper to arrive at a fuller picture. During the festive month of November, the two-wheeler industry grew by 25.27% and its (TVS) arch rivals like Hero MotoCorp and Honda Motorcycle & Scooters India (HMSI) managed to beat the industry trend by registering top-line growth of 27.28% and 59.04% respectively. For TVS, worse was yet to come. The month also saw it ceding its No. 3 slot in the two-wheeler market to HMSI, whose November sales logged 189,970 units.
Sure, the figures are for just the month of November. For the two contenders, the scales of fortune could tip either’s way and there could well be many a slip betwixt the cup and lip in the months ahead. For the past few years and till as late as November 2011, TVS was the third-largest two-wheeler manufacturer with a market share of 14.5%. The company sold 1,282,117 units as compared to the 1,228,987 units sold by HMSI during the April-November period. But the latest coup by HMSI has set tongues wagging. Will TVS be able to claw back the lost ground in the Indian two-wheeler market going ahead?
An e-mail sent to TVS Motor Company for its comments on this story did not elicit any response. But it is worth mentioning here that in October 2009, Business & Economy did a story discussing the fight for the #3 slot in the Indian two-wheeler industry between TVS and HMSI. As far back as two years ago, the magazine made a prediction that has come to be almost prophetic in hindsight. The story in question strongly made a case for TVS to pull up its socks or suffer the fate of watching HMSI vroom ahead. That fate has now come to haunt TVS. Considering the pace that HMSI has picked up of late, TVS will need to pull off a visceral performance and push sales aggressively to come back into the game with its honour intact.
Venu Srinivasan, the Chairman and Managing Director of TVS Motor Company, is not new to facing challenges. In fact, he has a reputation for thriving when the going gets tough. As a student of business management at Purdue University in the US, he spent a summer hawking the Good Book Bible in North Carolina. Despite being the grandson of the founder of the group (T.V. Sundaram Iyengar), Srinivasan started his career with the group as a grunt mechanic and put in a lot of elbow grease before moving up the ladder and becoming the CEO of Sundaram-Clayton (a TVS Group company) in 1979. And it was not before the mid-1980s that he rose to the top and was calling the shots at the two-wheeler manufacturer.
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