A lot of people ask me that at a time when every industry was feeling the crunch as America declared a ‘global recession’, how did Hero Honda manage to continue to post good figures and beat the industry’s top line growth? Call me philosophical, but I believe optimism and a positive attitude are the key pillars of Hero Honda’s phenomenal success story.

Believe in the Fundamentals: In the slowdown, we re-learnt the basics. In India, we are fortunate that the fundamentals of all our industries are very strong. According to the IRS (Indian Revenue Service) report of 2009, less than 17 percent of households in the country have two wheelers. And this is true for most of the popular consumer items like TV, refrigerators, and telephones etcetera.
There is a huge untapped market there waiting to be explored. After all, the Indian economy has been growing rapidly and there is — and was — a lot of disposable income in the hands of our consumers. We didn’t let the doomsayers shatter our faith in the market’s potential.

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Not All Spends Equal Investments: Therefore, we pursued an aggressive marketing strategy introducing new products and investing in existing campaigns. At a time when most people were cutting down on infrastructure costs, we doubled our investments on ground.  Three years back, we had 2,000 servicebacked dealer touch points, we expanded them to 4,000. Why did we do that? Because we believe that people had not stopped buying; they had just postponed their plans for better times. By increasing our presence, we built a strong sense of optimism and created aspiration value for our customers. We remodeled all our showrooms across the country so that they bore a festive look. We knew that our objective would be achieved if a person traveling in a bus gets attracted enough to step inside our showroom that has opened newly in his locality.

Challenge the Norm: When every brand is jumping toassociate their name with cricket being the real money spinnerin India, we took the road less traveled and put our money in hockey.  It may not have made immediate business sense, butthe kind of ownership and pride it created in our customers wasincredible. And we wanted to associate our brand with thosesentiments. Not many watched the semi-final of the hockey World Cup after India was knocked out, but almost everybody saw the advertisement. A bike is not just a product; it is theextension of your personality.
In a slowdown, enterprises tend to concentrate on the fewtop brands that bring in the maximum cash. But then yourun the risk of ignoring the individual. Traditionally, bikeadvertisements have been very similar, but we have broken thebarrier. Our advertisements speak to the target group whetherit is the adventure bike category or the utility rider. For example,we have several outlets in the country, which are ‘manned’ by an all-women staff called “just for hers”. It might contribute toless than 15 percent or so to total sales but it adds up to a lot in the long run.