Mahindra & Mahindra Leads Over Tata Motors In Mini-Trucks Sales

Mumbai: Mahindra & Mahindra has turned the tables on Tata Motors, the nation’s largest commercial vehicle maker, in the market for mini trucks, or small commercial vehicles.

Taking into account the load carrying SCV segment, Mahindra has a market share of 52  percent as against Tata’s 37 percent. After including passenger carrying variants of the mini trucks, the market shares of Mahindra and Tata stand at 49 percent and 41 percent respectively. There are two categories in the SCV market – the sub-2 tonne category and 2-3.5 tonne category. Tata Motors controls the sub-2 tonne category where its Ace family of mini trucks enjoy a market share of over 70 percent.

However, in the 2-3.5 tonne category, Mahindra’s pickups have a market share of nearly 70percent. Lack of matching products in this category is Tata Motors’ primary disadvantage. The past few years witnessed a large scale migration from sub-2 tonne to the upper segment and India’s largest automaker simply handed over the SCV segment leadership to Mahindra which has the Bolero Pickup, Genio (now replaced by the Imperio) and the new Big Bolero Pickup.

Moving forward, both companies are planning to consolidate their operations in the sub-segments they are strong in. While Tata is looking to address the niche segments within the SCV category, Mahindra plans to penetrate deeper into rural areas.

Tata Motors, which is being credited for creating a mini truck space over a decade back with the Ace, is being challenged on all fronts. The company has seen a whopping 22percent fall in market share in the past four years in its bread-and-butter mini-truck space. In the past three years, Tata Motors was hurt not only by the shrinking market, but also because it didn’t have many options in pickup trucks when migration from small trucks to pickup trucks was in full swing.