[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Carpainter

Yes Jazz was a premium hatch and Amaze is meant for budget sedan segment. But since I'm a big admirer of the brand it hurts me when they compromise quality to keep the cost low even if that is the demand of the market. Same goes for Toyota as well. I was really sad when the had launched Etios and Liva with all those cost cutting cheap quality plastic and all. Actually it's the high standard these brands have set here that we always expect more from them even if that is not logical.

Dear Carpainter, thank you for your inputs and welcome to Team BHP. Delighted to see that you are posting actively on our lovely forum. Most car makers will eventually learn what Maruti learnt a long time ago and that is that India is a low cost car market and due to economics the customer wants the most car for each rupee spent. This applies the especially in the smaller car segments. And the only way to achieve that is by cutting out some of the frills or making them extras at a price. One company which I think has figured out the balancing act is Hyundai. Happy motoring - Narayan

[vinodvayyat]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

And the only way to achieve that is by cutting out some of the frills or making them extras at a price. One company which I think has figured out the balancing act is Hyundai. Happy motoring - Narayan

True - Honda became like any other high selling brands in India. But not just by throwing away the frills, but also by compromising so much on safety. They've learnt how to make money.

[harry10]

Originally Posted by vinodvayyat

True - Honda became like any other high selling brands in India. But not just by throwing away the frills, but also by compromising so much on safety. They've learnt how to make money.

Let's be true to ourselves. Times have changed. Manufacturers have shifted their priorities. Honda and Toyota both have fallen in the quality which they used to provide earlier. Maybe it's cos of rising costs or market demand or whatever but I don't see us getting the quality products which rest of the world gets. Most manufacturers will keep providing us cost cutting cars cos we have learned to accept them and I don't see this trend changing in near future.

[Carpainter]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Dear Carpainter, thank you for your inputs and welcome to Team BHP. Delighted to see that you are posting actively on our lovely forum. Most car makers will eventually learn what Maruti learnt a long time ago and that is that India is a low cost car market and due to economics the customer wants the most car for each rupee spent. This applies the especially in the smaller car segments. And the only way to achieve that is by cutting out some of the frills or making them extras at a price. One company which I think has figured out the balancing act is Hyundai. Happy motoring - Narayan

Thank you sir for your appreciation. Actually I am a regular follower of T-bhp for over 4 years now. Just could not manage to get my membership approved before. Infact the ownership thread of Poloman and Chethan B G played a big part in my decision making when I bought my Polo back in 2011.
Coming back to the topic what you've said is what I was trying to say actually. Honda started as a premium brand in India not just because of pricing but also because of product quality. Now their recently launched products are nowhere near the likes of Civic etc. when it comes to quality even though they are several segment lower. They are made as VFM is a different topic altogether. But we bhpians always want quality over VFM don't we? That is the reason why we think twice before striking off Jetta/Octavia while choosing a D segment car. They are unreliable but they are the machines our hearts want. A common man would simply go and buy a reliable car.

PS. I'm not saying Honda has become unreliable. Honda is still a very reliable car and everyone knows that.

Originally Posted by harry10

Let's be true to ourselves. Times have changed. Manufacturers have shifted their priorities. Honda and Toyota both have fallen in the quality which they used to provide earlier. Maybe it's cos of rising costs or market demand or whatever but I don't see us getting the quality products which rest of the world gets. Most manufacturers will keep providing us cost cutting cars cos we have learned to accept them and I don't see this trend changing in near future.

This discrimination is what hurts me most. The same car we drive is way inferior in quality compared to its counterpart abroad. Even if both the cars are made in India itself. And the price difference is not something people will not want to pay if they get all the bells and whistles and not to mention the world class safety features.

[psankar]

An article from economic times, contrasting the different ways in which the respective global headquarters see the Indian market.

For almost two decades the two Japanese samurais, Honda and Toyota, have been road-mates in India. Irrespective of their global status — Toyota is the world's largest car company selling over 10 million cars annually and Honda the eighth largest selling under 4.5 million cars annually — they had a similar story in India.
(...)
Suddenly, the gears have shifted and their trajectories have diverged. Honda, on the back of launches of the Amaze and the Mobilio, has zipped ahead.

In 2014, a year in which virtually every car company was hurting in India and passenger vehicle sales barely grew by 0.66% to 25.7 lakh units, Honda posted a sizzling sales growth of 67%, selling 1.79 lakh units and raising its market share to 7% from 4.2% in 2013, thereby emerging as the fourth largest passenger vehicle seller.
Toyota, in contrast, hasn't made much progress, selling 1.3 lakh vehicles (down 7.7% from a year ago) with market share stagnating in the 5% region and giving it the sixth rank in India.

Link to article: Honda vs Toyota: Which of the two Japanese carmakers is winning the race in Indian market?



Mods: Please merge this with an appropriate thread if needed.

[PNTLovesNano]

Read the article completely and it is clear the India is way out of its priorities for Toyota and this will also mean that there will be nothing India-specific in the near future :(

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by psankar

An article from economic times, contrasting the different ways in which the respective global headquarters see the Indian market.





Link to article: Honda vs Toyota: Which of the two Japanese carmakers is winning the race in Indian market?







Mods: Please merge this with an appropriate thread if needed.

The whole article seems to be based on the absolute numbers each company delivers. However, there is a different side to the story as well.

Taking the December sales figures as an example-

Honda had total sales of around 14.4k units where City with around 6k units and Amaze with around 5.1k units brought majority of those customers to the showrooms. City is priced average of around 12L and Amaze around 8L.

Toyota on the other hand had only 11.7k total sales, however consisting majorly of Innova with 4.8k, Fortuner with 1.3k and Corolla with almost a thousand. Etios also chipped in with 2.5k units. Now, it's anybody's guess that Fortuner and Innova are two of the most profitable (for the manufacturer in terms of margins. In other words - overpriced) vehicles in the country priced around 30L average for Fortuner and 17L average for Innova.

Also, Honda has only the City as a segment topper, while Toyota leads three segments with a good margin of sales over its competition.

Toyota is not in such a bad position as the overall numbers (and the Economic Times article) suggest.

Originally Posted by PNTLovesNano

Read the article completely and it is clear the India is way out of its priorities for Toyota and this will also mean that there will be nothing India-specific in the near future :(

Shouldn't that be a good thing? 'India - specific' is mostly just a fancy way of saying 'cheap'. The India specific Etios twins are an example. Now with Toyota testing the Vios and the Rush compact SUV, I think they might just get back in the game soon. Even the article says the biggest weakness for Toyota is the lack of an entry level sedan and a compact SUV. Guess they should read more team-BHP news.

[RavenAvi]

What a turnaround for Honda Cars India, from the day this thread was started by GTO (way back in 2011, when Honda was ranked 9th in the Indian domestic market), to this piece of news!

Autocar Professional reports that India has now entered Honda's top 5 markets globally, placing itself firmly at number 4!

The USA still occupies top spot as Honda's largest market, with China at #2, home-country Japan at #3 and India at #4. Canada rounds up the top 5.

Apart from the revival of the Indian car market and the long-term attractive prospects, India is capturing more mind space in the boardroom of Honda's global headquarters in Japan. This market has jumped two rungs from sixth position in 2013-14 to be the fourth largest market for Honda in 2014-15 when Honda Cars India sold 180,000 vehicles.

In one of his first media interactions in India, Katsushi Inoue, President & CEO, Honda Cars India, says that he wants brand Honda to "move from customer satisfaction to customer delight". The top priority, therefore, is to enhance the quality of Honda further at every stage – production, product and retail to aftersales. The industry veteran, who has served in Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, UK, Poland and Germany in his nearly 30-year stint so far in Honda, is wary of the fact that in the industry when volume grows, quality tends to go down sometimes.

Honda has had a good run in India, driven mainly by its midsize sedan, the City. In May 2015, for example, Honda sold more Citys (7,562 units) than the combined sales of its Brio, Mobilio, Amaze and CR-V. To meet the strong demand, production capacity of the City will be hiked next year. Most of the City's, and Honda's overall sales, come from urban markets in India. The challenge for the brand is to make inroads into relatively smaller markets, many of which are emerging markets for the automotive industry. In many of these markets, the push strategy is needed to gain customers, which is in contrast to the pull that Honda thrives on in its current markets.

Hiroyuki Shimizu,senior vice-president and director, marketing and sales, Honda Cars India, who joined the company together with Inoue has this as one of his main tasks. Sales network expansion will be key. The company plans to take the count of authorised dealerships to 300 outlets in 200 cities, and 48 outlets will be added in Tier 3 cities. An established wide network will also be crucial for a model or two in the bottom of the portfolio pyramid in the future.

SOURCE

[RavenAvi]

ET Auto reports that Honda India is confident of repeating double-digit growth this fiscal year after the launch of the all-new Jazz.

It is investing Rs. 380 crores to expand production capacity in it's Tapukara plant to 1,80,000 units annually, to accomodate production of it's premium hatchback offering (from 1,20,000 units annually earlier).

The company gets ready to bring in the next-generation Honda Accord in the first half of 2016-17.

Present in India through its wholly-owned arm -- Honda Cars India, the company had posted a sales growth of 40.73 per cent in domestic market in 2014-15 at 1,89,062 units as against 1,34,339 units in the previous fiscal.

"We are eyeing double digit sales growth this fiscal. We are very confident of Jazz doing well here," Honda Cars India Ltd (HCIL) Senior Vice-President (Marketing and Sales) Jnaneswar Sen told , adding that apart from Jazz, the company currently has no plans to launch any other model in the domestic market in the ongoing financial year.

The next product launch from the company's stable is slated during the first half of next year. "We plan to launch Accord in the first half of next year. So Jazz is the only launch slated for this fiscal," Sen said.

The new Jazz is being manufactured at HCIL's Tapukara plant where it is investing Rs 380 crore to expand production capacity to 1.80 lakh units annually from 1.20 lakh units.

India is the first country where the Jazz would be offered with a diesel powertrain. Honda Cars India officials confirmed that there is no plan to introduce a diesel Jazz anywhere in the world apart from India.

Sen added that the company has tried to enhance localisation content in the new Jazz as compared to the previous edition. "The earlier model had localisation content of about 72 per cent. Over the period of time we have been able to increase it to 90 per cent of our current product range. So the new Jazz would also have this kind of localisation," Sen said.

ET Auto

[pixantz]

Originally Posted by Carpainter

I'm not saying Honda has become unreliable. Honda is still a very reliable car and everyone knows that.



This discrimination is what hurts me most. The same car we drive is way inferior in quality compared to its counterpart abroad. Even if both the cars are made in India itself. And the price difference is not something people will not want to pay if they get all the bells and whistles and not to mention the world class safety features.

I totally agree with you sir. I mirror your sentiments. But the "discrimination" you speak of is not the exact sentiment from the manufacturer's side, IMHO. Actually they are helpless. They have to live with our country's tax regime and overall environment which is, believe me, very hard for these guys to cope with. Please refer JoseVijays post number 464, just about 5 posts or so behind which should put things into perspective very aptly, I think. In India we love to bargain with just about everyone and in just about every purchase and are very happy and content to have made a good "bargain" and got something of 100% value at say 80% price without thinking about where the genuineness of the remaining 20% value is going to come from. The vendors pocket? Is everything a charity? So the only logical option left for a seller is to cut his costs somewhere, and that costs us the quality. But ah, we're still so content in the excellent "bargain" we made. Right?

[damager21]

Honda has been on a roll since the last 2 years. In 2013 it was all about Amaze and last year it was all about new City.

Since then, Honda has come a long way. While its sales have more than doubled in the past 2 years, on and off it has been trading position with Mahindra for that 3rd spot in monthly car sales.

With Jazz launching next month, it may take that 3rd position from Mahindra with a small cushion of additional sales.

To cement its position, Honda has been scouting for land to start a new plant and increase its production capacity.

As reported by Rushlane, Honda will sign new plant agreement with Gujarat in the next one month. The new plant will come up at Vithalapur and is expected to see investments to the tune of INR 4,000 crores which will be in a phased manner. The first phase will see an initial investment of INR 2,200-2,500 crores, while the remaining will follow in second phase.

The upcoming plant will have capacity of 1 to 1.25 lakh units per annum. Honda India's current capacity stands at 240,000 units per annum – 120,000 units each from their two existing plants, one in Greater Noida and one in Tapukara.

The capacity of Tapukara plant will be increased to 180,000 by mid 2016. Increased capacity of Tapukara plant and new plant in Gujarat will increase total capacity to 4,00,000 - 425,000 units per annum.

[sgiitk]

Now that Honda has moved downmarket let is hope they maintain the level of service. As reported elsewhere I found the Gurgaon dealer service quite a way behind what I have seen in Kanpur and Gwalior.

[i74js]

Honda as part of its lean manufacturing protocol should consider producing Mobilio, Amaze and Brio from G-Noida facility and Jazz and City from Tapukara. Also, there are other introductions pending for the Indian market, it will be good to have product segregation based on platform to help manage systems better.

In addition to this, off late there have been after sales issues (essentially around design of certain components in diesel engine and poor quality), if the target is to cross 3,00,000 mark in coming 2 years, it is all the more important for Honda to maintain public perception about their cars as once they loose out on quality, it is very difficult to regain consumer confidence.

Several of my friends who are Honda fans and have replaced "Honda" with a "Honda" 3 times in a row are complaining about the product quality and material use.

Cheers.

[Aditya]

Honda is looking to substantially increase exports from India in the years to come. The Japanese carmaker exported automobile components worth Rs. 420 crores in 2013-14, 722 crores in 2014-15 and is now targeting Rs. 1,100 crores in the current fiscal. This will be achieved by adding more export destinations to its existing list.

Click here to join the conversation.

[Rajeevraj]

Honda will be happy with this. 3 of their main models occupy 8,9 and 10th position in the September 2015 sales. Amaze makes a good return, but seems to fluctuate on a monthly basis Guess that the actual sales are lesser and hence the dispatches increase once in 2-3 months once the inventory is cleared.



Source: ETAuto