[AshBabu]

I have shared my thoughts in a different thread (Tata Bolt Hatchback):

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian...ml#post3597000

Elaborating it, the need of the hour is new concepts and out of box thinking. I have read in the forum that Zest, Bolt etc. are intermediate solution and Tata is working on new models which will be introduced later.

Only one point that Tata needs to be aware is - Time to market is essential. Whatever wonderful product they may come up with, if it is delayed beyond a certain period, it will have no value.

As an existing player they have a disadvantage to recapture market. Changing existing perception is a big challenge. Without bold or innovative new products, they are not going to turn the tide.

[Tstag]

It strikes me that TATA motors owns a strong premium car maker in JLR, a healthy truck business and a weakening passenger car division in TATA motors. The Indian domestic market is becoming increasingly competitive which is only going to intensify competition on TATA cars. So what should TATA do?

Merge with another company? If so who?

Or try and establish itself in more markets?

[Zappo]

Originally Posted by Tstag

It strikes me that TATA motors owns a strong premium car maker in JLR, a healthy truck business and a weakening passenger car division in TATA motors. The Indian domestic market is becoming increasingly competitive which is only going to intensify competition on TATA cars. So what should TATA do?

Merge with another company? If so who?

Or try and establish itself in more markets?

I think Tata Motors does not need to merge with any other company. They are already on the path to recovery, albeit a long one. Their current lot of cars show enough promises and people have finally started taking note of the changes. Tiago has seen good response while Tigor seems to hold a lot of promise. Hexa also drew unparalleled support and appreciative words from all and sundry when it was recently launched. Their next car, Nexon, is keeping people busy in anticipation. Even the Zest is doing not so bad overall in sales numbers (may not be anything big but still respectable numbers).

Tata is also leveraging its ownership of JLR. They are supposedly developing two SUVs with Land Rover input for the Indian market. There is a big rumor that the next Safari will be a thinly disguised Discovery. Otherwise also Tata Motors has been noted as the biggest spender on R&D for the year 2015-16 (More here).

Their recent technical tie-up with VW should also give them access to some interesting new technologies.

All in all I do not see why they need to think of merging with any other company. The dices have finally started falling the way they would like to see them fall!

[Tstag]

I'm not so sure. A company like TATA motors should be seeing explosive growth. However all the reports I read about TATA motors seems to report a healthy uptick in sales rather than the kind of growth we were seeing at the likes of Hyundai about a decade ago. The problem is that if TATA doesn't achieve this kind of growth soon it will need to cope with an influx of car makers coming into India, which is essentially the problem Proton now has.

Finding a car maker to merge with these days could also be a problem. There aren't many small enough and with good products to buy. So TATA is in a quandary. Maybe it simply needs to grow the development team more quickly and find new overseas markets with better products.

[akshay380]

Originally Posted by Tstag

I'm not so sure. A company like TATA motors should be seeing explosive growth. However all the reports I read about TATA motors seems to report a healthy uptick in sales rather than the kind of growth we were seeing at the likes of Hyundai about a decade ago. The problem is that if TATA doesn't achieve this kind of growth soon it will need to cope with an influx of car makers coming into India, which is essentially the problem Proton now has.

Gaining the lost trust takes time right? I have every intention to believe them when they themselves have owned their mistakes and are correcting them. May be ill revisit this thread in 2019 and see how it pans out.

[prashanthyr]

A pretty bleak picture of Tata in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jaguar-...ome-1500453710

I was in India recently on vacation and did a couple of highway trips, apart from numerous intra city travels in Bangalore / Mysore. A couple of striking things
a. Trucks - ~50% of the NEW trucks i saw on the road were Bharat Benz. This is a very small sample size, but was definitely surprised at how few Primas / new Tata 407s I saw on the road
b. Tiago / Tigor both look good - esp in the Copper/Orange shade, but their numbers are very low - at least in Bangalore / Mysore. I saw more Audis than Tiagos! again - small sample size.

No one in my immediate family / friends circle will touch a Tata car - irrespective of how good it is - biased opinions with not much data to back up, but fact remains - they wont go to a Tata showroom. Kind of illustrates the perception problem Tata has with India's middle class

[airbender]

Originally Posted by prashanthyr

A pretty bleak picture of Tata in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jaguar-...ome-1500453710

I was in India recently on vacation and did a couple of highway trips, apart from numerous intra city travels in Bangalore / Mysore. A couple of striking things
a. Trucks - ~50% of the NEW trucks i saw on the road were Bharat Benz. This is a very small sample size, but was definitely surprised at how few Primas / new Tata 407s I saw on the road
b. Tiago / Tigor both look good - esp in the Copper/Orange shade, but their numbers are very low - at least in Bangalore / Mysore. I saw more Audis than Tiagos! again - small sample size.

No one in my immediate family / friends circle will touch a Tata car - irrespective of how good it is - biased opinions with not much data to back up, but fact remains - they wont go to a Tata showroom. Kind of illustrates the perception problem Tata has with India's middle class

Can you please post the TXT from that article? One needs to subscribe to read that article.

[Ragavsr]

Originally Posted by prashanthyr

No one in my immediate family / friends circle will touch a Tata car - irrespective of how good it is - biased opinions with not much data to back up, but fact remains - they wont go to a Tata showroom. Kind of illustrates the perception problem Tata has with India's middle class

Indians are among the biggest hypocrites as usual. While they won't touch a Tata car with a barge pole, they will line up to buy Jaguars and Land Rovers.

While the commercial truck segment is quite important, JLR sales can compensate for losses in Tata passenger cars division easily. The profit margins on luxury vehicles are FAT.

Not that success in the mass market would hurt ,but it's no longer their bread and butter.

[gupta_chd]

Originally Posted by Ragavsr

Indians are among the biggest hypocrites as usual. While they won't touch a Tata car with a barge pole, they will line up to buy Jaguars and Land Rovers.

Don't understand the hypocrisy part at all.

Tata has given sub standard products in passenger car division to indian consumers for more than a decade and ruined their reputation repeatedly. It was the time when customers were still lining up to buy Tata cars. Check the sales figures of Indica/indigo of yesteryears.

Now, tata is paying the price of its own sins. I know atleast 3 people who bought Indica/manza, partly due to Tata's indian connection but rued the decision later on for many years. They swear not to touch any Tata vehicle in lifetime.

People buy jags/lrs as they are entirely different products from a different company, ownership not withstanding. Instead they are being rational and impartial here .

[n.devdath]

Originally Posted by Ragavsr

Indians are among the biggest hypocrites as usual. While they won't touch a Tata car with a barge pole, they will line up to buy Jaguars and Land Rovers.

There is no hypocrisy in this.
JLR products and customer experience both pre and post sales is good and hence they sell.

Similarly, the Tiago is good and it sells. The others are not liked by people hence dont sell.

TML has a long long way to go before it can think of matching JLR levels of customer experience.

Originally Posted by Ragavsr

Not that success in the mass market would hurt ,but it's no longer their bread and butter.

Really? Let them shut shop then instead of running a loss making unit year on year. There is no philanthropy in this.

Just like any other Co, they too are in the market to sell cars and make money and unless they get their act right, that ain't happening, simple.

[Ragavsr]

Originally Posted by n.devdath

There is no hypocrisy in this.
JLR products and customer experience both pre and post sales is good and hence they sell.

Similarly, the Tiago is good and it sells. The others are not liked by people hence dont sell.

TML has a long long way to go before it can think of matching JLR levels

There are several threads on team bhp itself which explain the unreliable nature and poor service support of JLR . However , it's not a big deal because they compete with the German Big 3 which are no better in reliability.

All launches from the Zest till now ( except the Bolt which failed bcos the Zest is only 50k higher ) . These cars have proven to very reliable on par with the competition. I have not heard many horror stories as such .
What I meant is they can take their time in getting things right.

How much ever they improve though , there will be people in this country who will never overcome their bias.

The other day , I saw an ad on Facebook group for a Tata Vista 2013 where the owner had quoted a price of 275000 . The first comment from someone who was not even interested in buying any car was " 275 k for a tata" . As if the Vista is an Alto and as if the owner should give it away for 50k.

EDIT : The Zest despite facing in house competition fron the Tigor still manages to outsell the Amaze, Aspire and the Ameo to rank 2nd or 3rd in the segment . I think we should stop comparing any manufacturer with Maruti because Maruti customers are never going to consider other cars inspite of how good the competition is. They are buyers not worth chasing.

[skyrocket003]

Originally Posted by Ragavsr

EDIT : The Zest despite facing in house competition fron the Tigor still manages to outsell the Amaze, Aspire and the Ameo to rank 2nd or 3rd in the segment . I think we should stop comparing any manufacturer with Maruti because Maruti customers are never going to consider other cars inspite of how good the competition is. They are buyers not worth chasing.

That is a really good point you have there. Yes we have a major portion of buyers for whom the search of a car begins and ends at Maruti. Its like they wont even do any comparison with any other XYZ brand even if the car offered by XYZ is much better in terms of performance, build and VFM. That's how the Indian car scene has been since long.

But there is a shift as well and that is evident from the multiple Tiagos and Tigors on the road. What Tata is doing is certainly in the right direction and it will definitely take a lot more effort to regain their market share. Bump up the after sales support, keep marketing your products well, do those customer meets or family events etc . That should help TATA a long way.

[RavenAvi]

Tata Motors starts a massive cost-cutting drive across multiple future projects which have been identified as deterrents to the company's profitability & growth going forward.

After putting the Tamo Racemo project on indefinite hold, Tata Motors is now going to skip the 2018 edition of the Geneva Motor Show after being a regular at the most prestigious international motor show for the past 19 years.

They are also pulling the plug on the T1 Prima Truck Racing Championship, which was started back in 2014.

Tata Motors’ bread-and-butter business (commercial vehicle) has seen a dramatic drop in profitability and market share, which hit an all-time low of 38.70 percent in April-May 2017. This has set off alarm bells in Bombay House and company chairman N Chandrasekaran recently laid strong emphasis on turning around the company's domestic business. "The commercial vehicle segment has witnessed a continued decline in market share and the passenger car performance has been muted," he said addressing shareholders in the 72nd annual report of Tata Motors. Cuts are to its business projects as well as expenditure on overheads like management salaries and even office rent.

Plans are now afoot to scale things back and the company may only produce a handful of Racemos at best before putting the entire division on ice.

The estimated Rs 20-30 crore spent on developing concepts and participating in the (Geneva Motor) show is being viewed as an unnecessary expense. Also, with no immediate plans to launch new models in the European market, the top management feels that it has nothing tangible to display excepts for concept cars which never see the light of day.

However, this highly publicized (Prima Racing) series has done little to boost the sales figures or the image of the truck maker and again is being seen as an unnecessary distraction and a huge cost. According to sources, the automaker has spent up to an eye-popping Rs 70 crore a year on the Prima truck racing series which was the pet project of Ravi Pishrody, the former head of Tata Motors’ CV business.

In a recent letter to employees, managing director Guenter Butschek said that the next 3-6 months would be absolutely critical for the company. “Our business plan is going to be extremely demanding with stretched targets, in terms of sales/market share and financial performance,” he was quoted as saying.

ACI

[sparky@home]

With Tata's cost cutting in place, will they also put on hold their new projects like the Q501, Discovery Sport look alike. I hope not.

[y2ksrs]

Tata Motors should look to split their CV and PV businesses into separate entities managed by completely different CEOs and management immediately. I get this feeling that if this does not happen, the losses incurred in the CV business will eventually bring down their PV business and the company as a whole. What they are doing now is to make sacrifices on the PV business in order to resurrect the CV business. A bad strategy in my opinion. The Racemo can do a lot of good to Tata Motors' image on the PV side. Killing it off is a bad move.