Honda has managed to grab the third position in the sales charts during June and July 2015, removing Mahindra from that position. New launches have helped it achieve this.
The Indian car market is a unique place. A market where the best of strategies taught in the global business schools fail and the simplest of plans sometimes work much better. While some brands have managed to crack the market like nobody’s business, the others have been struggling. Honda, a brand which had low sales volumes till the time they came up with their i-DTEC diesel engine, suddenly started climbing up on the sales chart and is now a very prominent player in the market. So much so that it has managed to race past Mahindra too in the past two months.
Riding on the success of popular cars like the City and Amaze, Honda has also benefited from the launch of the Jazz which has been received well by customers. The new factory has also helped the Japanese brand increase its production capacity and the company no longer faces any capacity constraints. These factors combined with the slightly premium image that the logo carries has benefited them. Whereas Mahindra have been seeing a declining sales trend due to the products in the lineup ageing and the age showing. But the recent XUV500 facelift should help them add more numbers.
Mahindra also has some upcoming launching like the TUV300 compact SUV which will be launched by mid-September and the carmaker expects it to do very well considering how popular compact SUVs are in India. Also, the upcoming S101 which is a micro SUV will help add sales volumes. The brand also needs to axe the non-performing cars as the only thing those vehicles do is put more financial strain and eat showroom space. Since Honda is done with its major launches in the Indian market for now, it will be interesting to see the battle once the new Mahindra cars are launched.
