Honda India has set a target of achieving double sales in the fiscal 2012-13 in comparison to its sales in the fiscal 2011-12 which have been hampered by production losses and shortage of component supply owing to floods in Thailand in addition to sales slowdown in the Indian automobile industry. The sales for the current fiscal 2011-12 are likely to end at around 50,000 units, about 7 percent less in comparison to the sales in the 2010-11 fiscal.
According to Mr. Jnaneswar Sen Senior Vice President (Sales and Marketing) Honda SIEL Cars India, the company has witnessed a production loss of 32 percent in India. He added that the company has ramped up production at its Greater Noida manufacturing plant and plans on achieving optimum production capacity utilization. Working in double shifts, the company is striving to deliver the backlog orders for its car models, the City sedan and the new Brio hatchback.
The company is banking upon the new Brio hatchback which was launched in September 2011 to drive up the sales in the new fiscal. Currently, Honda India has received a total of 9,000 bookings out of 2,000 cars have been delivered to the customers. It hopes to complete the deliveries of the rest of the bookings by the end of March 2012. Mr. Sen added that the Brio is Honda’s first volume car model and expects it to be a big learning experience for the company.
Another step in its efforts to ramp up production is the increase in the localization being implemented for the Brio hatchback from 80 percent to 90 percent.
