The world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer Hero MotoCorp and its arch rival Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, the world’s largest scooter OEM, are engaged in an intense battle for supremacy in the world’s largest two-wheeler market. While Hero’s retail sales lead of 2.23 million units a decade ago has reduced, it still leads Honda by over half-a-million units in the current fiscal. Expect the market leader to take aggressive action to protect its turf in FY2026 and beyond.
07 Mar 2025 | 3149 Views | By Ajit Dalvi
Even as FY2025 draws to a close three weeks from today, there have been plenty of headlines on the Hero versus Honda battle being played out in India. Hero MotoCorp and Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI), once-joint-partner companies and now arch rivals, are slugging it out in a no-holds-barred ...
This is an Autocar Pro Plus article. Subscribe to continue reading.
Even as FY2025 draws to a close three weeks from today, there have been plenty of headlines on the Hero versus Honda battle being played out in India. Hero MotoCorp and Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI), once-joint-partner companies and now arch rivals, are slugging it out in a no-holds-barred battle for supremacy in the world’s largest two-wheeler market.
While most of the news has been about these two OEMs’ wholesales or vehicle dispatches to their dealers, which is a function of demand-and-supply albeit OEMs tend to push even slow-moving products and increase inventory, it is the retail sales statistics which portray the real-world scenario where Hero MotoCorp continues to have a retail sales lead of over half-a-million units over Honda.
Expect the market leader to take aggressive action to protect its turf through a number of measures including new products as well as key marketing moves. Hero MotoCorp could also be expected to benefit sizeably in the current year with the ongoing wedding season in India, which is considered an auspicious time to buy vehicles, especially two-wheelers.
Before looking at the current fiscal, let’s see how the two companies, which went their separate ways in December 2010, squared off in terms of their retail sales over the past decade.
In FY2016, the difference between Hero MotoCorp (5.26 million units) and HMSI (3.03 million units) was a humungous 22.38 lakh or 2.23 million units. Ten fiscal years down the line, in FY2025 to date (April 1, 2024 to March 6, 2025), the retail sales difference between the two OEMs has sharply reduced to 547,502 units – which still is a lead of over half-a-million units.
The retail sales difference was at its highest – 2.73 million units – in FY2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic struck and impacted the years after it. FY2020 was also when Hero MotoCorp notched its highest ever retails in a fiscal – 71,83,360 or 7.18 million two-wheelers. This effectively meant 3% YoY growth on a large year-ago base and translated into 19,680 Hero motorcycles and scooters being sold each day across India! The Covid-impacted FY2021 saw Hero sales fall sharply by 33% to 4.76 million units, gradually rising to 5.39 million units in FY2024 albeit this is still 1.79 million units lower than the heady performance in FY2020. Hero MotoCorp’s FY2025 (April 1-2024 to March 6, 2025) retails are 5.08 million units. With March retails yet to be counted, the company could wrap up the fiscal with an estimated 5.43 million units or less.
Honda’s best fiscal to date has been FY2019 when, with retail sales of 49,59,494 units, it missed hitting the 5 million retail milestone by just 40,506 units. HMSI’s retails dropped 10% YoY in FY2020 to 4.45 million units and continued dropping for the next two fiscals before staging a recovery in FY2023 (3.79 million units), FY2024 (4.93 million units) and FY2025 (to date, 4.49 million units). Honda could end the current fiscal with an estimated 4.75 million units, around 210,000 units less than its record FY2019 retails.
What’s clear is this comparison is that Honda, with its better rate of growth over the past three fiscals, has slowly but surely been reducing the retail sales gap with Hero MotoCorp. The scale of catching up from Honda’s perspective can be seen that it has gone from a 2.7 million-units differential in FY2020 to 587,502 units in the current fiscal.
Nevertheless, the fact is that Hero MotoCorp continues to lead Honda by over half-a-million units, which is a sizeable number. Expect the market leader to take aggressive action to protect its turf through a number of measures including new products as well as key marketing moves. Meanwhile, Hero MotoCorp could also be expected to benefit sizeably with the ongoing wedding season in India, which is considered an auscipious time to buy vehicles, especially two-wheelers.
WHOLESALES DIFFERENCE IN FIRST 11 MONTHS OF FY2025: 175,361 UNITS
Hero MotoCorp has been the unrivalled boss of the volume game since years mainly due to the sustained demand for its fuel-sipping 100cc commuter motorcycles. As the wholesales data table for FY2025 (above) depicts, Hero MotoCorp has dispatched a total of 5.10 million two-wheelers in the first 11 months of the current fiscal, 175,361 units more than Honda’s 4.92 million units. Meanwhile, HMSI (383,918 units) dispatched an additional 26,622 two-wheelers compared to Hero MotoCorp (357,296 units) in February 2025, the only month in the fiscal to date that it went ahead of the market leader.
Hero MotoCorp has a strong stable of motorcycles and its market leadership stems from the mega volumes it generates from the fuel-sipping up to 100-100cc motorcycle category, particularly the 97.2cc HF Deluxe, Splendor+ and Passion brands, and the 113cc Passion XTEC and Super Splendor bikes. In the 125cc category, the Glamour and Super Splendor do duty for Hero. In the 150cc-200cc category, there’s the Xtreme 160R and XPulse 200. Higher up in cubic capacity are the 210cc Karizma and the recently launched Mavrick 440, which has heralded its entry into the premium motorcycle segment.
In scooters, Hero has the 110cc Pleasure and Xoom, followed by the 125cc Destini. And Hero MotoCorp which has had the advantage when it comes to electric scooters with the Vida brand, will now have to contend with HMSI having entered EV territory with its Activa e and QC1.
Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India’s product line-up includes four ICE scooters (Activa and Dio in both 110cc and 125cc avatars) and two electric scooters (Activa E and QC1) along with nine motorcycles, across the 100-110cc (Shine 100, CD 110 Dream Deluxe and Livo), 125cc (Shine 125 and SP125), 160cc (Unicorn and SP160) and 180-200cc (Hornet 2.0 and CB200X) segments.
HMSI’s premium motorcycle retail format is led by the BigWing Topline for entire premium motorcycle range (300cc - 1800cc) in top metros and BigWing, which is exclusively for midsize motorcycle segment (300cc – 500cc). Honda’s range of motorcycles includes the all-new CB350, H’ness CB350, CB350RS, CB300F, CB300R, NX500, XL750 Transalp, Africa Twin and Gold Wing Tour. The Hornet 2.0 and CB200X are now retailed via BigWing showrooms as well.
WILL HERO KEEP HONDA AT BAY IN FY2026?
The last word on the battle between these two-wheeler biggies has yet to be written. Hero MotoCorp, which industry had felt would wilt when the company's partnership with Honda split 15 years ago but instead rose strongly on its own, can be expected to take effective rearguard action to protect its turf.
An aggressive Honda, which is the latest legacy ICE two-wheeler manufacturer to enter the electric mobility sector, is now confidently eyeing the No. 1 title but will have to contend with a resilient market leader. Stay tuned in for more news on this segment of the India automobile industry.
ALSO READ:
150-200cc sole bike category to see sales decline, TVS rules with 364,000 Apaches
Bajaj Auto is No. 1 in February, e2W sales cross a million units for the first time in a fiscal