Team-BHP - Concorde Motors (Tata dealer group) is in big trouble. EDIT: Shutting down

Concorde Motors is a fully-owned subsidiary of Tata Motors. It was set up in 2002. At present, the company has dealerships in Delhi, Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kochi.

Concorde Motors (Tata dealer group) is in big trouble. EDIT: Shutting down-concorde.jpg

It is rumoured that Tata Motors is considering shutting down Concorde Motors. It is reported that:

There has been almost zero offtake since the past 2 months
Malad Concorde will shut down soon, followed by Thane and Prabhadevi outlets
Indrajit motors is in talks to acquire Concorde Malad showroom
Concorde Thane GM Mr. Noor resigned last month
Rumour has it that they will shut down all outlets slowly and gradually
It's a total loss business for Tata motors. Auditing of all the documents is in process.

Link to Team-BHP News

Quote:

Originally Posted by bansal.sushant (Post 4689889)

I don't understand why this would be a total loss business.

Concorde is a dealership which is company owned ie.. Tata Motors owns and manages it. However, the service quality has always left a lot to be desired. It's just not there when you compare it with a regular third party dealership. Hence they've never really had a positive ROI.

Instead of closing down, they can go 'all out' on service, make it the best there is. Tata customers are a hungry lot. They are not getting good service from the regular dealers and so scope exists. It should stand for the best. But Concorde is steeped in 'babudom'.

When I bought my Tata vehicle 2 years back, I was driving almost 20 kilometers to get good service on the car (service interval being 15,000 Kms helped) but then a miracle happened at Dairy Circle Concorde (closest to me). They let got of all the oldies who were treating it like a Government job, and were unwieldy. A new head was brought in for service. And I found the service levels far better than anywhere. It was a real pleasure going there. Now I prefer going there, and there alone. (If at all customers are still not going there in large numbers, the reasons can be attributed to the location. It's on the busiest road in town with huge traffic jams)

So, they should try 'turning a new leaf' before considering shut down or demanding customers like me will have no other choice but sell the Tata vehicle and move on. Good service is the life-blood.

Had heard about it last week through a fellow TBHP member, who got the info from his friendly SA at Concorde.

Concorde has got preferential treatment from Tata. Spares were often routed through them to other dealers. Even when other dealers did not have sufficient stock of spares, Concorde was the go-to place.

How could they go into loss ? Seems something else ?

How could this happen? In Bangalore at least, Concorde was easily the biggest and most successful dealer. They had about 3-4 outlets here alone.
Their service quality was decent too. I wonder what’s up with Tata here? Even Aadya Motors recently shut down an outlet (can’t remember which one).

Quote:

Originally Posted by artemis_fowl (Post 4689930)

Aadya motors shut down for a very different reason inspite of doing good business. Adishakti cars have taken over the dealership. However, they might shut down too thanks to the way they are currently working and dealing with their customers.

Somethings with Tata dealerships seldom change :deadhorse

I heard about this last month from multiple sources. I am looking to purchase Nexon and a friendly SA tells me that Concorde motors could be shut down by end of Dec.

@Sebring: The dairy circle outlet could remain open though. Some other dealer is looking to take over that outlet. This is very close to my house too and I am banking on it to remain open. I hope the service improves or at least remains same.

Heard from someone in Pune that Concorde Baner hasn't sold a car in two months either. COCO outlets are supposed to be better run because they have the backing (financial, strategic) of the company. Wonder how Concorde messed up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bansal.sushant (Post 4689889)

Is it because there is only dealership and no service centres (means for majority of the profit)?

Concorde does sales and service.

This is inevitable .. I went two times to Concorde Hyderabad for booking cars (One time Hexa and another time Tigor). The attitude of staff and professionalism in service are worse than government offices. In fact this is going to be a good move by Tata. They have great quality products now, and now they need quality sales and after sales service. Hope this will bring a positive change to Tata in India

See this as privatisation by Tata. Dealers do the heavy lifting of sales for all other players and it is the best route for Tata too. It never worked and acknowledging it was long overdue.

Just like in the case of Nano failure, It is important to acknowledge mistakes and move on.

It remains a mystery for now the exact cause of it.
We can speculate high salaries of employees, no strategy etc to be the drivers for it.

If Tata owns the land and have infrastructure set up, they might want to lease it. A thing which MS is planning or doing.

I think this is a good move. Tata motors should concentrate only on design and marketing of cars. Selling is best done by dealers. That way they can have better control of dealers.

Tata internal policies are too employee friendly with very relaxed targets. It is not possible to maintain an aggressive sales force without stringent sales target monitoring and strict escalation points. That kind of aggressive targets is only possible when the employees are outside Tata's umbrella.

Every person at Concorde don't care about selling cars. As the dealership is backed by Tata Motors and Tata motors themselves backed by Tata Sons who have given some breath by pumping 250 Cr. As no target is left to achieve then why on the earth they will bother to sell the cars. Tata Motors should only concentrate on new products in line with new competition and launch these products sooner. Just my views.