Unprecedented sales take Honda cars to best year in India

Japanese carmaker Honda Motors which has not looked back after launch of its Amaze hatchback and followed it up with successful introduction of latest Honda City sedan may be in a quandary to declare either past 2013 or current 2014 as its best year in terms of sales. According to past sales records of the firm before the introduction of City and Amaze it was sell around 3000 – 5000 units on a monthly basis.  However in recent months Honda’s existing models along with new ones managed to clock an amazing number of 18426 units in single month of March 2014 among which Amaze contributed by 7374 units while Brio contributed 1456 units.

During announcement of annual sales figures for financial year of 2013-14 Honda declared growth by 83 percent with sales of more than 1.34 lakh units during this period. While reporting this sales figures to members of the media Honda’s India Snr. VP stated that success will be attributed to innovative models and marketing effort of its sales team. Honda is confident of continuing this growth in forthcoming year since it is launching a slew of new models in 2014 among which the first will be Honda Mobilio MPV followed by Honda Jazz which has already earned several accolades overseas for design and performance. Both these models are already under production and Honda is confident that once bookings begin it would be able to complete deliveries within a short period of time and avoid delays.

Honda has started production at its new plant in Tapukara and all previous manufacturing constraints have been removed after opening of this facility in Feb 2014. After taking car of production issues Honda shifted its focus to increasing sales network across semi urban towns and rural areas of India  and expand its reach like other local producers Mahindra and Maruti Suzuki. As of 2014 Honda has 170 dealers spread across 107 cities which sell its products to customers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. The Japanese carmaker is keen on extending this network by 35 percent to 230 dealerships so that it has a significant presence across the length and breadth of India.

This recent growth in sales has helped Honda jump up two ranks among India’s carmakers lineup to rank at 4^th largest carmaker in India as it made a great start to 2014 with sales of 15714 units. According to the latest strategy adopted by Honda Motors, it will make several models based on singe platform which will also share the same engine and several body components. Even though basic essentials remain the same, models will have varied exterior structure ranging from hatchback to sedan and also utility vehicles. This will help manufacturer to keep costs low and new designs can be developed over existing tested engine and frame structures. Honda’s new models Mobilio and Jazz also have the same chassis and engineering components along with same diesel and petrol engines though different body structures. Since the production costs of these products are low they can be sold a low cost to buyers making them price competitive to other cars in same category.