[a4anurag]

Indian 3-Wheeler Industry Performance

Three Wheeler Market in India has seen its own share of tops and turns. While India remains the world’s top producer, consumer and exporter of three-wheelers; challenges faced by it were many! The advent of safer, faster and price-effective 4-wheeled counterparts (say Tata Ace) did raise some serious questions on the sustainability of the industry in the recent years. Also government’s concern over safety and fuel usage has been worrying the manufacturers. However, 3 wheelers remained to be an affordable means of short-to-medium public transportation and last mile connectivity for goods transportation. The significance was well identified by Taxi Aggregators (Ola, etc) and have added autos as well under their offering.

We have categorized the sales under Passenger & Load segments to highlight better clarity and extract deeper insights on the respective OEM’s performance

Passenger Segment:

Bajaj Auto has clearly been the winner in load category. The dominance is even higher in tier-1 cities where only the Petrol & CNG offering is being sold. While Piaggio dominates the upcountry market (Tier 2 & 3 cities), as diesel engines are predominant in these regions. However, to see the way these 3-wheeled passenger offerings contribute to these OEM's, a historical trend would be apt:

While Bajaj Auto & Piaggio are clearly the segment leaders; the race to the third position has become quite interesting - M&M and Atul Auto are giving a tough competition to each other. While Mahindra has lost some ground, Atul's growth over the past 5 years has more than doubled and has meanwhile able to overtake even TVS in the race! The Gujarat based 3-wheeler OEM has made considerable inroads in the passenger segment - Atul is surely the manufacturer to look out for.

Load Segment:

Piaggio leads in the segment by a huge margin. However, it has lost over 10% Market share in previous 5 FY's! The gains has been made primarily by Mahindra & Atul Auto. Do note that the entire segment (load category) depends on diesel offerings and hence the drastic difference in sales from its passenger siblings.

The segment has seen an upward movement in the past 3 FY's and we see the numbers stabilizing ~1 Lakh units/annum as the competition from the 4-wheeler load options remains significant. Also the possibilities for the OEM's to innovate in the segment seems limited.

Charts:

1. Passenger Segment

Domestic Sales


Market Share


Historical Data (from the Last 5 FY's)

2. Load Segment:

Domestic Sales


Market Share


Historical Data (from the Last 5 FY's)

All of the above has been taken from Management Punditz.

SOURCE:
http://management-punditz.blogspot.i...rformance.html

[a4anurag]

Curious as this segment of the industry is least studied and read about here. I haven't seen threads running on the 3 wheeler industry but it always intrigued me regarding their sales figures and I stumble upon the data provided by Management Punditz!

I visited every individual manufacturer's website to see what products they have on offer and I was mighty amazed looking at the range and versatility.

Look at the image below denoting the products under each manufacturer.

SOURCE: Respective manufacturers website!

NOTE: Click any picture to open a larger higher-resolution version in a new window / tab.

[Rehaan]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[turbospooler]

Thanks for the analysis!
My takeaway from this analysis:
1) Bajaj captures 54% market share with just 6 models and just 2 engine options.
2) TVS captures 4% market share with 1 model

The reason I am highlighting this is that high number of variants does not always result in garnering high market share as is the thought process of many companies (eg Piaggio in this case).
I agree that customization helps increase the conversion of sale to each and every customer but then that results in losing profitability. Bajaj has maintained both, low variants and high profitability.

[jalsa777]

Firstly, thanks for sharing. Interesting numbers indeed.
As pointed out by you, the safety and efficiency of these 3 wheelers is suspect. However, people still buy them. Are they cheaper than their 4-wheeled counter parts?
I would be interesting to compare prices of the 3 & 4 - wheeled vehicles catering to the same segments.

When the Nano was launched, I was amazed to hear that a Bajaj RE rickshaw was almost 2-2.5 times the cost of a base version Nano!! (I do not know how true that was though)