Mofussil Fuel

Honda puts the spotlight on semi-urban and rural customers with the new Cliq scooter based on the Activa platform

- Shubhabrata Marmar

The Honda Activa is a legend. The way it reinvigorated a dead scooter market is an amazing story. More recently, the Activa has not only dominated the scooter market but this meek Honda is also the largest-selling two-wheeler in India today. Having secured their position, Honda has been playing around. The Navi was a fun (and popular) take on the scooter, firmly based on the Activa’s platform. And now, we have the Honda Cliq, another variant based on the Activa platform. The Honda Cliq doesn’t really have any direct competition in the traditional sense. The Honda Cliq is, however, an almost completely normal scooter with a terrific price if you think about it. And if you approach the proposition like that, then there are numerous scooters it competes with. But Honda says that isn’t why the Cliq was created and that’s where our story should begin.

THE SEMI-URBAN/ RURAL CUSTOMER

Honda, always a customer and customer survey oriented company, discovered — no surprise, really — that the extra-urban customer bought 100-110cc motorcycles almost as the default. To make matters worse, they never considered scooters. I say no surprise because 10-inch-wheeled scooters have a simple technical restriction - the worse the roads gets, the harder they become to ride.

But Honda says they discovered one real issue and one perception problem that the Cliq will try to tackle. The real issue is simple. The average cost of the 100-110cc motorcycle was a ₹44,000 odd, but the average scooter of equal displacement was ₹49,000. A simple price problem, then.

The other issue was the idea that all automatics are expensive. And that was one of the reasons why despite the legend, for example, the Honda scooters found little or no traction in the semi-urban markets.

DESIGN