December 2021 turned out to be a gloomy month for the two-wheeler industry. Reeling under the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 in April-June 2021, demand from the rural areas, especially, was lukewarm. This is in contrast to December 2020 when sales showed an uptick on the back of good monsoons as well as the gradual lifting of the lockdown in several states.
Hero MotoCorp saw a 12 percent decline in domestic sales, logging 3,74,485 units in December 2021 as against 4,25,033 in December 2020. Export numbers were down nine percent for the month to 20,288 units compared to 22,302 in December 2020.
Bajaj Auto closed the calendar with sales of 1,27,593 units in December, down nearly one percent from its December 2020 tally of 1,26,642 units. Its export numbers fell 9 percent at 1,91,176 units as against 2,09,942 units in December 2020.
While TVS Motor saw its December sales fall 17 percent to 1,46,763 units as against 1,76,912 units in December 2020, its export numbers provided a silver lining to the month’s performance, with a rise of close to nine percent with 88,629 units sold as against 81,327 in December 2020.
Royal Enfield’s December sales were flat with 65,187 units sold as compared to 65,492 units in December 2020, down by half a percent. On the export front, 8,552 units were sold as against 3,503 units sold in the year before, up by 144 percent.
With the country seeing increasing cases of the Omicron variant especially in key states such as Maharashtra, it remains to be seen how the sales will pan out in the last quarter of the current fiscal.