India to top Indonesia as top Honda 2-wheeler mkt

India is poised to overtake Indonesia as the largest market for scooters and bikes for Honda globally.

Currently India is the fastest growing market for the Japanese auto major, with sales growing at over 30% to 3.6 million units so far this year. It is expected to end the year at over 4 million units. In Indonesia, Honda's has sold around 4.2 million units so far, but slower than India.

"In some months this year, we sold more bikes and scooters in India than Indonesia but overall they are still ahead," said Y S Guleria, vice president sales and marketing, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India. "With our fourth factory expected to go on stream next year, we will have more capacity and hopefully India will emerge as the biggest market for Honda." Honda has three factories in India with cumulative capacity of 4.6 million units per annum. The fourth, in Gujarat, will have a capacity of 1.2 million units and will be the world's largest scooter-only factory.

The company ended its 25-year-old joint venture with Hero Group in 2010, and is targeting the No. 1 spot by the turn of this decade. Hero has also upped the ante, preparing a roadmap to hit 12 million unit capacity globally by 2020.