Honda Siel taking a gamble by introducing Brio and newly priced Jazz

HSCI (Honda Siel Cars India), the Japanese auto makers that had been quite content with their mid segment domination of City sedan along with other SUVs and sedans are now looking into small car segment in hopes of some aggressive growth.

Business Standard reported that even though Honda did have Jazz hatchback in its armoury, the high prices were a constraint, and by reducing the pricing by 1.6 lakhs, they are keeping the momentum of sales up. With good sales in the Jazz hatchbacks and the upcoming launch of Brio any time soon, HSCI (Honda Siel Cars India), are planning to up the production at their Greater Noida unit to around 1 lakh cars yearly claiming to have reached a milestone by doing so. Reports also speculate that HSCI (Honda Siel Cars India) are planning to up the output to around 1.2 lakh cars yearly having the option of using their second facility at Tapukara in Rajasthan in the coming two years.

Jnaneswar Sen, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales of HSCI (Honda Siel Cars India) said that they expected to increase yearly production to one lakh cars by November and December of this year and that they could stretch a further 20% through efficient production. He also said that it would take 3 months more for supply of components from Japan and things would get normalized by then.

The report also mentions Sen further told that HSCI (Honda Siel Cars India) were also planning to produce Brio compact in a large scale and are preparing for its launch next month. Supply of components was hampered due to the recent quakes in Japan that hindered their production, but things were stabilizing now. There has been a lot of demand for Honda Jazz which has risen to 10 folds now, but components were not reaching them on time. They were limited to only producing 500 cars per month now, so until they did expand production, they are expecting a wait period for Jazz. They do expect to sell around 1000 cars next year. The report also stated that one of the factors affecting HSCI’s sales was due to non-availability of diesel models. The demand for diesel cars are up due to hike in interest rates and petrol costs making buyers go for diesel cars and eventually petrol cars taking a slump for some time now. The prices of diesel cars being little cheaper has also affected them. Car makers such as Maruti Suzuki, Volkswagen and GM (General Motors) have reacted sharply by introducing newer diesel variants and taken away Honda Siel’s market shares across the sector.