[C300]

Some interesting insight in this thread. TML never made quality cars IMO. I hope this culture of 'cutting the corners' doesn't spread to JLR.

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

Originally Posted by .sushilkumar

for some strange reasons, anything happening in TML becomes a sensation here and a blame game begins that TML is not paying vendors / too much internal politics and bla bla bla .

Hmmm.... Nobody who supplies to other brands has raised such a gripe so far.

nobody knows the real "personnel reasons behind this resign" is and we start blaming poor vendor payments and internal politics straight way .

You have a point there.

i don;t think taxi segment is miniscule in india market. it was a huge opportunity waiting to be tapped and tata;s not only tapped that but also monopolized the segment. they have created a segment for themselves in the market. it will be interesting to see the stat;s wrt to whats the size of taxi segment in India.

Only Tata vehicles in Goa used as taxis are Sumos. Higher end vehicles are other brands. "taxi Car" is a Wagon R.

That said, GTO has said that Taxi segment in India is small; and that does me a bit surprised. I do expect Taxi segment to be smaller than passenger segment in volumes, but I certainly do like to have some numbers.

i think they are just 1 or 2 point behind the competitors . what they need to resolve is niggling issues in their cars.

A miss by an inch is as good as a miss by a mile.

Originally Posted by julupani

People here are worried because of something that contributes 10-15% of Tata Motors revenues is in a bit of trouble.

For somebody at Bombay House, even entire Tata Motors contributes about a third of the revenues of the 75+billion group. The Indian passenger car segment probably contributes about 2-3% of Tata Group revenues. No wonder its business as usual.

Obviously, we love TML more than the guys @ Bombay House. :-D

[julupani]

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

Obviously, we love TML more than the guys @ Bombay House. :-D

Yes, people at Bombay House just hate their flagship company dont they. They are completely cross with the fact that Tata Motors generated 27billion dollars in revenue. How could they dare do that.

Leaving aside the sarcasm, the point is though there are problems with Tata Motors, its not like they are a company who are struggling to grow or generate profits.

And let's not start extrapolating from one person's departure that the entire company is going down the drain.

If you do love Tata , and more importantly as a shareholder, at least you should get a better picture of your company before saying anything.

[Saanil]

Its sad that Forster had to go just after 2 years. I do not think TATA motors will be doomed with his resignation. I think Ratan Tata will make sure TATA motors is in the hands of a responsible person. With such major changes there is always a good probablility that things might change. Expect some major changes in policies at TATA motors.

[999]

Forster is known to be a great guy and added immense value to the company. I have met some people from Corus (now tata) in Spain. Basically an R&D guy and few QC guys for steel rolls. They were also saying the same thing, tata is more of politics than a professional company (In their words, "they smile at everything and do nothing"). The manager was a guy from India (from Bengal to be specific). He was promoting his junior to be the head of the R&D centre they have in spain and was giving negetive vibes about the original employees(European) back to India. Corus steel were cutting down the people in QC and putting up more in production. It is not a good sign. My company (which is into oil exploration, is building few new vessels in Norway). Initially they planned the building in Singapore and the steel was already ordered. Then things changed and they decided to move to norway for operational reasons. By the way if somebody is not aware, Norway is the ship building capital of the world. Then all the steel was airlifted to Norway for the new build. Then after 2 weeks 60% of the sheets (mind you the weight involved is huge) was declared unfit for the vessel due to the composition of sulpher and something else which will lead to faster corrosion and there were micro fractures in the cold roll, which would increase the fatigue failure. Eventually all the steel was sold scrap and new steel was ordered. So at the end all of us, I mean asians, get a bad name and we loss business. This is not a very good sign. We are cost effective but lacking quality wise.

[AlphaKilo]

well adding to the above post, the basic mentality come to us because of the competition and local market. We have always been a outsourced market and are always used to the fact "kitna deta hain?" Moreso, we had been a R&D nation some time ago, but in today's trend we are more towards quick money which can be easily obtained by rolling out products at a faster rate with less quality and selling in more numbers. I.e. Germans sell one product at 200$ which will last for 10 years, we see 10 products for 20$ which will last for a year each! we show more numbers and yet we achieve the same profit! And rightly because of this reason is Great Britain now suffering from lack of science and technology, that is they thought they have achieved everything and reduced the R&D investment and result is, once a great engineering nation which pioneered many engineering feats now has near to no patents or recent achievements to its name and all its car manufacturers are now owned by countries which were once its colonies.

[.sushilkumar]

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

Hmmm.... Nobody who supplies to other brands has raised such a gripe so far.

possibly because few people like to talk about their business in open public forums like T-BHP . more over , the person in question is not doing business with them anymore. add to that we can not judge after seeing just one side of the coin. Every OEM keeps their vendors on toe's for various reasons .

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

Only Tata vehicles in Goa used as taxis are Sumos. Higher end vehicles are other brands. "taxi Car" is a Wagon R.

Goa is not india . head over to north , majority of call centers / BPO's are running indica;s as taxis and so called taxi car , majorly is tata indigo .

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

That said, GTO has said that Taxi segment in India is small; and that does me a bit surprised. I do expect Taxi segment to be smaller than passenger segment in volumes, but I certainly do like to have some numbers.

exactly my POV hence request for stats .

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

A miss by an inch is as good as a miss by a mile.

agreed but it;s not as bad it;s made out to be .

[Daewood]

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

That said, GTO has said that Taxi segment in India is small; and that does me a bit surprised. I do expect Taxi segment to be smaller than passenger segment in volumes, but I certainly do like to have some numbers.

The 2008 data for the number of new registrations across India is,
that around 9.25 Lakh private cars and 1 lakh taxis were registered.

For 2010 i guess the private car numbers must have gone up significantly,
as the Taxi segment relies more on used cars, whereas the
private car market's preference is for a new one.

[.sushilkumar]

^^^ IMO that makes it around 12-13 % . that;s not small and it;t not as if rest of the 9.25 lakh is non TATA .

[Daewood]

Originally Posted by .sushilkumar

not as if rest of the 9.25 lakh is non TATA .

The statement holds good for the taxi segment too where apart from Indicas,
you also have Omnis, Logans, Taveras, Innovas etc

[.sushilkumar]

^^ agreed . point is they have a good mix of market share ( spread across various segments ) . so calling them just a commercial vehicle maker won't be appropriate .

[chinkara]

Shouldn't we wait and see?

As far as politics goes, it is there everywhere, no? It is not really the good vs. evil that it is made out to be by "insiders". There are egos and valid viewpoints on both sides.

I am just hoping that Merlin is launched on time, is a good car, and is priced at <10L.

[sanchari]

The niggles that many customers complain about in Tata cars is what indicates the "chalta hai" and QC issues at TML. After spending lakhs on a car, one wants peace of mind, not niggles which lead to multiple trip to A.S.S centers.

The market share of TML is declining in the passenger segment. While it may contribute just 10-20% of TML revenues, the bigger problem is the perception people have of TML making low quality cars. The big three US companies had similar perception till a decade back, when Japanese cars were considered to be of better quality than Ford/GM/Chrysler. And one would get better resale value for japanese cars compared to the US ones. It took a long time for the US companies to overcome those perceptions. I hope TML doesn't end up in the same boat.

One interesting strategy adopted by the Korean automakers(Kia/Hyundai) in US to overcome the perceptions of low quality was to offer 10 year/100,000 mile warranty on their engines and transmission. They were pretty confident of their QC and hence could make such a guarantee.

The market share is Tata's to lose. With the overall quality of cars going up, and the competition heating up, Tata needs to work hard to clear the perceptions of low quality. If it doesn't work hard on it now, it may be too late few years down the line.

[mathranik]

Although the thread is about Forster's resignation at an untimely juncture and not much should be looked into it, this is serving to be a good platform for all of us to actually discuss what might have gone wrong with Tata vis-a-vis its erstwhile competitors.

Whenever a new thread about confusion over a 7 lac rupee car opens up here, we all say how Manza is such a VFM vehicle, albeit at the cost of quality and dubious after-sales treatment and indifferent personnel. The factors mentioned here can obviously be worked upon by the manufacturer in reference here, but what they have chosen to do is to cater to a completely different segment - the so-called taxi segment.

Do we see a problem in product positioning? By the word of mouth, they would like to capture the complete taxi segment (local taxis in small towns, cool-cabs, the 'private registration' cabs, call center commute, etc), but their marketing communication also tries to lure the private passenger car segment - what with ultra-cool gadgetry and opulence on Manza / Aria / limited-edition Safari. Indigo XL was squarely aimed at back-seat drivers, wasn't it? How many people would really want to be spotted dead in a Tata, trying to make a statement of arrival?

Before people pounce on me, I would like to disclaim that I hate Tata. On the contrary, I own a Tata Manza and Indigo eCS. However, for my personal commute, I prefer my Innova and Fluidic Verna. The point I am trying to make here is that there are various attributes that factor in the slow sales of some very good Tata vehicles (Indica / Vista are very spacious and VFM. Indigo eCS has great FE. Manza is amazing at its backseat comfort). Those factors may be, but are not limited to :

- Incorrect/Ambiguous marketing communication from the manufacturer.
- Lack of consistency in quality.
- Brand's image of being a truck maker (They can easily do a Toyota-Lexus thing, or even a Toyota-Scion thing. Debatable, but possible).
- Extremely carefree and uninterested staff at dealerships and service centers (Largely).

I would love to go through a Monthly sales report of Indian passenger cars in the near future where I could read Manza + Indigo moving 15,000 units. They deserve to!

[man_and_machine]

Did the Jaguar acquisition not teach Tata anything about Quality? Its not so difficult to find out how to make nice car that an owner can be proud of.

I used to own an indica, the first 2 years is nice , but when the car crosses its 50,000Km mark it suddenly changes into a bag of woes!

Seems like Tata's focus is only on the price (cost, spares etc) and that "itne paisa me itnaeech" philosophy. (For non-hindi readers its "what your bucks can buy"). In the past when the Indica was the only ( except for the FIAT palio) small diesel car this worked. But now with atleast half a dozen good cars and TATA not changing their philosophy, I see this trend of loss of market share to continue.