Honda Activa Touches The 1.5-Crore Milestone

Honda’s cash cow, the Activa, has achieved yet another sales breakthrough by becoming India’s first scooter to reach 1.5 crore unit cumulative sales. Celebrating this feat, Minoru Kato, president and CEO, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India rolled out the landmark 1,50,00,000th Activa from the assembly line of Honda’s scooter-only plant in Gujarat.

Commenting about the achievement, Kato said, “Globally developing markets similar to India, especially Thailand and Indonesia have already shifted to scooterisation. Now, India is getting scooterised like never before. In just 7 years, scooter segment contribution to total industry has doubled from 16% (in 2009-10) to 32% (in 2016-17). And leading this trend is Activa which re-activated the declining scooter segment way back in 2001 and has now become the No. 1 selling two-wheeler both in India and the world. Honda believes that there is huge future potential for scooterisation, more so in tier-II and tier-III towns.” 

Launched in 2001, Activa sold 55,000 units in its debut year. Withing 3 years since its debut, the Activa became the leader in the automatic scooter segment with 5 lakh unit sold. By 2012-13, Activa sales had crossed the 10 lakh mark annually but were still behind India’s largest selling two-wheeler (a motorcycle at that time) by a sizable gap of 8.73 lakh units.

The situation reversed in the next 4 years. Activa sales more than doubled from 12.05 lakh units in FY’ 2012-13 to 27.59 lakh units in FY’ 2016-17. For the first time in 17 years, the Activa, an automatic scooter, had overtaken all motorcycles to become India’s No. 1 selling two-wheeler in 2016-17 and leads by a comfortable margin of 2.09 lakh units over its nearest competition.

Eleven years after its launch, in June 2012, the Activa breached the 50th lakh sales milestone but just three years after that (July 2015), the sales jumped to over one crore units. 1.5 years later, the scooter racked up another 50 lakh units, setting the benchmark as the best selling two-wheeler both in India and around the world.

Elaborating on the reason for the success of the Activa, Yadvinder Singh Guleria, senior vice-president, sales and marketing, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India said, “Activa’s phenomenal success and market leadership is in its continuous evolution ahead of times. In 2001, Activa was launched with CLIC mechanism, tyres with patented tuff-up tube, all-metal body powered by the automatic 102cc engine. In 2009, it became the industry’s first scooter to come with Combi-Brake System with Equalizer, a bigger and more powerful 110cc engine, tubeless tyres and an updated design. By 2013, the Activa’s heart got powered by the Honda Eco Technology (HET) which took its mileage in the league of commuter motorcycles. In 2015, the third-generation Activa 3G became more stylish. 2017 saw the birth of the more stylish BS-IV and AHO Activa 4G with mobile charging port. Backed by increasing customer demand, we are confident that the Activa will continue to grow as the No. 1 choice of India.”

Also read: 2017 Honda Activa-i Launched At Rs 47,913