Honda India's swordfighter boss looks to fire up tepid sales

Swaraj BaggonkarMoneycontrolYoichiro Ueno, President and CEO, Honda Cars India has perhaps been amongst the busiest senior automotive executives in the country since the past one year.Battling culture differences, diverse communities, fending off competition while defending market shares is what this 52-year-old Japanese Honda veteran of more than three decades has been busy with.Ueno joined Honda Cars India in February last year from Honda Malaysia where he was the MD and CEO since 2011. He also worked with Honda outfits in New Zealand, Thailand, China and North America.But don’t be led to believe that Honda is setting the sale charts on fire in India. It is rather far from it.Last month concluded for Honda with a record decline of 15 consecutive months of fall in sales. As per SIAM data Honda reported a fall of 23 per cent in volumes in April-January even when the industry reported a growth of 9 percent during the same period.Its average monthly sales of 12,400 units this financial year has been only slightly better than its average monthly the year before at 11,200 units.“Spending a year in India is the same as spending three years elsewhere”, said the Kendo (Japanese swordfighting martial art) fighter in an free-wheeling interaction with Moneycontrol.“I learnt Kendo in Japan when I was 10, but a hard hit on my head during one of the bouts made me quit”, admitted Ueno immediately.Ueno is getting ready for his second bout and this time he is sure not the one to quit first. Under fire from competition Honda is going back to its strength of premium positioning which is also where unlikely players – Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai – have made threatening inroads in the last two years.Honda is looking to cement its premium position with the City, Civic (to-be-launched) and Accord while simultaneously reducing focus on mass market models like Brio, Mobilio and BR-V. With 7,500 bookings in two weeks the new City has brought consumers back to Honda showrooms.“I would not say it was a mistake entering the hatchback segment with the Brio however there was gap between the customer expectation of the Honda brand and what we thought the customers would like to have. May be in future the focus will be on the higher segment”, added Ueno.What has surprised Ueno and his sales team is the response to the top-end variant of the City (christened ZX) which cost more than Rs 15 lakh on-road Mumbai. From the western region alone 41 per cent of City buyers have opted the ZX variant even though its price tag puts it in the league of luxury saloons.The company further reports that quota of Accord Hybrids allotted for India became a sell-out not just in February but for March as well. The robust response is despite the steep price tag of the flagship sedan which is nearly Rs 50 lakh.“There is a family from Punjab who bought four Accord Hybrids. We are struggling to get more lots allotted to India”, said Raman Kumar Sharma, vice president, Honda Cars India.Next month (March 16) the company is lining up the launch of WRV, a urban-style crossover vehicle based on the Jazz platform. To be positioned in the premium segment of Rs 6.5 lakh and above, the WRV will be marketed as mini sports utility vehicle (SUV) to cash in on the growing popularity of such class of vehicles.The company is also studying the possibility of launching its luxury brand Acura in India. Honda will have to reengineer the Acura products and make them right hand drive to be able to sell in India. Acuras have sedans, SUVs and sports cars and are sold in US, Canada, China and Japan.