Fill it, shut it, forget it, is a line imprinted in the minds of more than half of motorcycle riders in India, a line Hero MotoCorp used to devastating effect to convey its proposition of fuel efficiency when it had Honda as its joint venture partner.

A little over a year after the partners decided to go their separate ways, Hero MotoCorp is still king of the hill, accounting for 56% of all bikes sold between April 2011 and February 2012.

That's bad news for the competition, not just because Hero has demonstrated a robust growth of 16.5% in the current fiscal year and bumped up its share from 54.6% a year ago. Rivals also need to be wary about the Japanese bikemaker that is synonymous with quality riding on its own. In January, Honda displayed its prowess when it overtook TVS Motors to claim the No. 3 position in the Indian motorcycles market.

Honda has now trained its sights on No. 2 Bajaj Auto Ltd (BAL). Although the gap between the two is still substantial, the Japanese maker has a share that is under a third of BAL's, there are signs that Honda is closing in.

For the month of February the difference in sales between the two companies (of all two-wheelers) was just 7,000 units. And with Honda Motorcycles & Scooters India (HMSI), the Indian operation of the Japanese giant, preparing to launch the Yuga 110 cc in May in the entry-level segment, it will be in a position to address a new segment of buyers.

Nervous Bajaj? No.

You'd expect BAL CEO Rajiv Bajaj to be nervous with the sight of Honda in his rear view mirror. He isn't. For a very good reason: he is looking at BAL from a global perspective, 35% of BAL's sales are overseas. Of the roughly 50 million two-wheelers sold globally, 30-35 million are motorcycles.

By the end of the current fiscal year, BAL would have sold close to some 3.8 million motorcycles, giving it a global market share of over 10%. "We should go up to 20-25%. A day should come when 20% of our sales are from India and 80% from outside," says Bajaj.

More important, says Bajaj, BAL is the world's most profitable two-wheeler maker with operating profit margins of roughly 18%. Analysts point out that Hero and Honda have operating profit margins of 11-12%; other global two-wheeler majors (Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawasaki), have operating margins in low single digits, if not in negative territory.



Source: Hero powers on minus Honda, beats TVS; Bajaj Auto takes the race to global tracks - The Economic Times

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A lot of bikers really don't agree with Hero's bikes being "Fill it, Shut it, forget it" machines specially due to better mileage by their Indian counterparts. But then again, that's what we call good marketing. It is something which brainwashes people, without being legally questionable...

Hero's progress after Honda's departure is worth applauding, mostly due to good marketing and effective public relations. But one's attention is caught by Mr. Rajiv Bajaj's ambitions. Specially, the statement "A day should come when 20% of our sales are from India and 80% from outside".

And despite being a profitable company, all its products are actually considered Value for Money... Best of all worlds, is it? Well surely, if the components' quality level can be kept up which shouldn't be a problem now with KTM's involvement. Still, each company maintains its strong points... Who knows what will happen next?