I found Hero's drastically falling sales more surprising, as Bajaj is consistently rising.
Local or international, single or multiple model, the truth is Splendor's sales has dropped to around half...

Hero is dropping like a stone... Want to see Yamaha, Suzuki coming up with good products for domestic market so that the stone will fall sooner......

Well if Hero is going to claim "Largest selling bike in the world", then they need to include the world, not just India. Certainly, Splendor is selling more than Discover as far as India is concerned. Hero has aggressively pushed bikes to dealers, now they are cutting that off, that's why it looked like it's sales fell to half of what they were last month. I think, this is just a blip for Hero. One thing is clear, competition is heating up in 100cc segment with Dream Yuga & speculated new 100cc bike from Bajaj, which is supposed to be costliest in 100cc segment.

this is a big news.

although both all the models of splendour and discover are iincluded, it is worth noting that splendour does not compete in 150 CC segment as discover. i think comparison should be segment wise and not model wise or range wise.

also bajaj is strong in export market = intelligent business.

it is also mentioned that hero was correcting inventories, so lets observe for a few more months or rather wait for annual sales fig. at the end of financial year, to decide the correct picture.

Is there any source where we can get model-wise breakup of monthly sales figures of these bikes ? BTW here in Bangalore while every new buyer is first looking at these two bikes (125ST and DY) I hardly see them on the roads. And no, I'm smart enough to not mistake DY for a Shine (the reason I've been quoted for them being rare here) and I wear glasses while riding .

How does 4-valve discover sales fair wrt the 2-valve discovers ?

There is very much a source where we can get access to modelwise data but unfortunately I do not have access to this source. I know what this source is, but it is paid, and I have no commercial interest in buying this data from the source (which, as per terms and conditions, I am not allowed to replicate anywhere ).

A good pointer though is that ~30% of all Discovers sold in September were 125ST, so it is surely getting more than its fair share considering that its the most expensive Discover in their range.

It might be a classical case of market saturation of a product. No matter how good a product is, sometime in it's lifecycle, it reaches a point of stationary growth followed by decline in number. Please refer Product_life-cycle_management_(marketing).

More than 75% of our population need an efficient mode of transportation for going from point A to point B. Hence, these bread and butter bikes will never go out of the buyer's wishlist. But for splendor, passion and other 100cc bikes which have been using that legendary engine which made Hero Honda the largest motorcycle company years ago have begun to lose appeal not because other brands are offer competition with better products, but because the buyer is more informed than ever before. With the advent of marketing through social networking sites and the research attitude in the buyers, a normal man now considers his options by comparing several things like engine capacity, power and looks instead of falling for overuse of words like "Pro", "Plus" and even "XPro"(! ) in the bike names or words like "revolutionary" and "All new" and fictional ads that picturise bikes flying around doing all sorts of dangerous stunts. In short people take into consideration essential details of the products rather than blindly following flashy ads or new sticker designs or just plain PR talk.

Newer engine design like the 110cc engines from Honda, Suzuki or Bajaj's value for money and the need to have more power for the same amount of money is what differentiate the buyers of other bikes from the buyers of this bike. Adding good offers and treating the customers well, helps. As with the experience of many buyers and my personal bad experience with many Hero dealerships, the attitude of the sales personnel is like Fake godmen who create an illusion and stuff it up your nose into your head. I'm not telling this because I have anything against anyone mentioned here but because every visit just resulted in waste of my time where the sales staff just wanted me to believe that their bikes had more divine qualities like providing extra mileage because of alien technology or give features like semi digital consoles that are atleast 50 years ahead of their time.

This instance just goes to show that keeping a brand alive with just sticker changes, clear lens indicators and addition of sleazy suffixes to the names of bikes can only keep your sales going for so long as the buyer decides to look for other options. You have to offer a reason for even a common baseline buyer to keep considering your product.

It might be hard to believe but even Sachin Tendulkar will retire one day and similarly Splendor sales will decline as the buyer grows more curious and demanding.

In the last month Splendor sales might have been overtaken by Discover but it's still early to tell for sure if Splendor won't bounce back.

True.. Even the "Maruti 800" had to die. Every product has a life span and can't go on forever.

Nevermind that then...

Interesting. When the rumoured Discover 100ST (possibly a ~9-10 BHP bike) launches this december it should increase the numbers further then....

Change is the only constant
hero(honda) was mostly using honda's engineering(and engines) and just doing the branding/stickering stuff... and now after the split from honda, what do you see:
1. Them spending crores on ad's (for re-branding and to drive the name 'hero')
2.Introduce 3 'new' models, ignitor,maestro & impulse... then already announce that these will be discontinued soon.
3.Partner with EBR ... not sure how this is going to help them achieve those sales numbers that they are used to.. because most of their sales are from the commuter segment..
And lastly the people's thinking is going to be like 'the old splendor's had honda engines the new ones are bad' etc etc.. preconceived notions (which is very common here)
Hero needs some serious stuff to get close to bajaj/honda etc.. and this is going to take just more than re-branding!!

in this past month I've visited couple of villages..one in UP & other one in Haryana & even now 1 or more then one splendor was standing in each & every house..roads were filled with Splendors..though there was a significant improvement in the no. of Discover as well but still,visually it wasn't even close to the no. of splendors..6-7 bikes out of every 10 bikes were splendor..& those guys in rural area still buy splendor as that name itself is a brand for them no matter if its by Hero or Hero Honda..

but in city like Delhi,Splendor's sale has seen a drop drastically as my brother is in sales department of Hero & he told me the same as well..

are they the 'new' splendors or ones from the herohonda generation ?

Then what to say About Royal Enfield??

both..people in rural areas still buying Splendors no matter it comes under Hero Honda branding or under HMC..for them,Splendor itself is a brand

mayb hero motor corp shud become splendor motor corp .. anyways good luck to hero motor corp!!