Hero MotoCorp’s 100 cc motorcycle range – the Hero Splendor and HF Deluxe (both are the same mechanically) – defines the Indian two-wheeler industry. In 2025, the company shipped nearly 4.6 million of these motorcycles. That is 20.6% of the entire market. Throw in similar machines from TVS, Honda, and Bajaj, and the sales numbers cross 5.6 million, a healthy 25.4% of the market.
We call them Mass Commuter motorcycles. For InsightEV segmentation, we define the segment as motorcycles with the lower variant priced at less than INR 90,000 on-road.
2025 was Good, but not the peak.
Mind you, 2025 was not even the peak. Over the years, Hero’s Mass Commuter motorcycle sales topped out at more than 6.2 million units in 2018, with segment sales nearing 8.6 million.
For decades, the mass commuter has been the two-wheeler that has defined the Indian economy. These products have served the core mobility needs of millions of Indians. Since 2009, more than 100 million of these motorcycles have been sold, and the InsightEV parc estimate puts about 60 million still plying.
Considering the mass commuter segment defines mobility, it should mirror the economic growth of the country, if not surpass it with a healthy margin. India is a fast-growing economy, and the last five years have not been too bad for the country. One would have expected that the mass commuter segment would have grown at a healthy pace as well.
That is not the case. We have seen an almost stagnation in this segment since the COVID years. Since 2021, sales have grown by only 1.58%. Meanwhile, during the same period, the Indian per capita income has grown at a healthy 13.6% CAGR.
Refusing to take off
The year 2021 was a COVID year, and sales were at one of their lowest in recent years. Despite the low base effect, the statistics indicate that the Mass Commuter segment refused to take off.
Which brings us to think that if the Indian population is increasing, the economy is growing, the mobility needs continue to grow, then what is holding back the very segment that defines two-wheeler sales?
Are customers not buying two-wheelers, especially mass commuter motorcycles?
Or is there a possibility that they’re buying something else that is not getting reflected in the data?
Slow-Speed Electric Scooters
Mass commuters are fuss-free, frills-free motorcycles that get the job done. They take people from A to B at a relatively low cost, with a dependability promise, and deliver a hassle-free experience where even heavy users have to go to the service station only once in six months. Low-cost, dependability, and predictability are the key drivers.
While people in large cities have started moving to bigger engine sizes, the 100cc Mass Commuter remains the most popular format in the smaller cities and the interiors of the country.
That seems to be changing now. High population density, small towns, are fast adapting to slow-speed electric two-wheelers. These are Chinese imports, and while the quality is not even a point of discussion, they, much like Mass Commuter motorcycles, also get the job done.
In India, a slow-speed two-wheeler is defined as anything that has a top speed of less than 25 kph. This is a very interesting segment because, from a usability perspective, it is very lucrative for the lower economic segment of the country. A 25 kph scooter does not need registration, license plates, a riding license, or any protective gear like helmets. The vehicles do not need to be homologated. There is no need for insurance. Frankly, the Indian government treats a sub-25 kph scooter at the same level as bicycles.
They ignore them. Slow-speed scooters are not covered under the Motor Vehicle Act.
On the acquisition cost, the user of a slow-speed electric scooter manages to save around INR 20,000 (USD 220) on an absolute basis. This is before we even account for the difference in retail prices of a 100 cc mass commuter motorcycle and a slow-speed scooter.
Arguably, a mass commuter motorcycle has got many more capabilities than a slow-speed electric scooter, but the point is that in households where there was a need to add a second vehicle, or there was no price elasticity, the slow-speed electric scooter makes a lot more sense. People like it.
And every slow-speed scooter that finds a home closes the door for a Hero Splendor. India is not slowing down in acquiring two-wheelers; the smaller cities have a newfound love.
It also helps that many cities in India are terribly congested, and 25 kph is maybe more than the average travelling speed in the city. Also, in small towns, the distances are small, so you are not regularly losing much time even if you’re commuting by a slow-speed scooter.
Then add to that the savings on account of fuel costs. While fuel prices have not been an issue to discuss in the last five years, any saving is a good saving.
Unlike large cities, most people in small towns have access to ground-floor level charging points. So an OEM does not even have to solve for charging.
A hidden benefit of slow-speed electric scooters is also that, since they are not covered under the Motor Vehicle Act, the traffic police also treats you as a bicycle equivalent.
They ignore you even if you go against the traffic on a dual carriageway, jump a light, or ride on pavements.
For the small shopkeeper or a daily wage earner in a small town, that’s cost savings all around.
Slow-Speed Electric Scooter Entrepreneurs: The Other Side of the Equation
Slow-speed electric scooters also work for the entrepreneurs who are selling them. All these scooters come from China in knocked-down kits. A container carries anywhere over 150 kits, and once you offload the kits, all you need is a small shed and a few trained mechanics to assemble them. The set-up cost is low, there is hardly any CAPEX, no engineering or R&D is needed, no big investments in factory or paint shops, or in departments like purchasing, product, software, etc.
You are a trader masquerading as a scooter manufacturer. The only metrics that you are monitoring are how fast you can recirculate the capital.
It’s trading, not manufacturing, and it’s extremely profitable.
Data accessed by InsightEV indicates that the cost of kits, ex-battery and ex-tires, can be as low as INR 10,000 (USD 115). Once you put the battery, charger, and tires, the cost still ends up on the right side of INR 30,000. The selling price can cross INR 50,000 easily.
That’s a lot of margin in an industry struggling for some. Most ‘proper’ players – Ola, Ather, River, etc. – are just gross margin positive and far away from EBITDA breakeven.
In contrast, the slow-speed electric scooter traders are extremely profitable, on a net basis. Trading is supposed to be. Some, like Zelio, have even been listed on the BSE SME market.
Slow-speed scooter operators have no nationwide ambitions. Most of them limit themselves to 4-5 districts. The key is that India’s population is so large that even the 4-5 districts can provide a target population of a few million. A cursory look at Zelio’s financials and a back-of-the-napkin calculation puts annual sales at nearly 30,000 units. That’s a lot of scooters, sold within a small geography. Mind you, Zelio is not even the only operator in the said districts.
There would never be competition
What makes the business even better is that the big guys will never enter the segment. A TVS Motor, Hero MotoCorp, or even an Ola Electric will find it extremely difficult to match the pricing of scooters that are coming from China. They can’t stoop that low in terms of quality because it will hurt their brand name. Rolling out a separate brand for slow-speed scooters is too messy, and eventually, people will link it to your core brand. Perhaps the only outlier here is Bajaj Auto, which manufactures slow-speed mopeds for Bangalore-based start-up Yulu. However, Yulu is not in the retail market.
How big is the market?
The (proper) two-wheeler industry often brushes aside the slow-speed-scooter market as low-priced, low-volume, and mostly irrelevant. The truth is that for every slow-speed scooter sold, the proper two-wheeler industry loses a sale.
While doing the ground research for the Indian Two-Wheeler Market Forecast, we traveled across some of the most populated tier-3 towns in the country and realised that slow-speed electric scooters have been making inroads far beyond what the industry estimates. We identified more than 80 operators across India, importing and white-labeling these slow-speed scooters. Some had even matured to the level of offering franchises and dealerships of their own.
Then we accessed the import data. The complication is that the same scooter gets reported across multiple lines of data as components are imported under different sub-heads. So the team set about cleaning a few thousand lines of data. The resultant number (of slow-speed electric scooters imported) was….
Let’s just say, it was bigger than six digits.
The actual number is part of the India Two-Wheeler Market Forecast. We published it last week, and would be happy to send you sample slides and subscription details. Mail us at editor@insightev.com