[padmrajravi]

JLR and Nano sure were ambitious decisions, but I really respect the man for having the courage to pull it off. To me those decisions were more of visionary and India centric nature rather than a pure profit centric move. A seasoned CEO like Chandrasekharan thinking on behalf of shareholders and numbers may not have gone for it. It needs thinking on a different level and I respect the man for that.

I am sure the global image gained through those decisions has significantly increased TML's borrowing capacity as well as the ability to forge partnerships with global players. Their transition from indica era to Harrier/Hexa/Nexon facelift type designs would not have happened if not for the JLR parternship.

[TorqueIndia]

TML media statement on rumoured partnerships :

https://twitter.com/Xroaders_001/sta...799127552?s=20

[kamilharis]

If TATA is looking to join hands with any Chinese company, it should be either GEELY or CHANGAN . I have seen both the brands and all of their modern cars are of International quality, and myself own one among them. Companies like BYD and Chery still needs to improve a lot in many ways and hence TATA should pick the one who is well established.

[vharihar]

I think it was a mistake to abandon Nano completely. It is a swell looker, the rickshaw-like sound is a negative, so they could have simply converted it into an EV with a little bit of work. All the dies could still have been used as also jigs and fixtures, much of the assembly line actually.

And yes, done a Maruti kind of thing by splitting premium vehicles into a separate dealership brand. They tried Concorde but it was for all of their cars, they needn't have done that. Need a separate brand only for their premium vehicles, easier to ensure enhanced dealership quality and customer experience that way.

Tiago and Nexon are doing well, and Harrier will see things pick up I'm sure.

[AZT]

Originally Posted by srini1785

He was instrumental in opening PCV division and his wet dreams of a 1L car was just a bad business decision. Equally bad was their decision to take over the JLR with unfavorable terms which is now loosing money. He did the same with Tata Steel's buy out of Corus.
...
Talk in those days was that Ratan's obsession with taking TATA global was not going to end up well for the conglomerate. Having survived a take over scare ( a la Cyrus mistry affair)

The Cyrus Mistry affair is a lot deeper than just that. My cousin is a top lawyer and told me how before that meeting where he was ousted, all top law firms and PR firms were taken on retainer by Tata so it was difficult for the Mistry family to control the narrative. There was no takeover scare, it was just him shutting down legacy loss making businesses which had no visibility on profit (Nano alone had lost over 1000 cr).

The more I read about the story, the more I feel Mistry was not the bad guy he was being portrayed as.

[srini1785]

Originally Posted by AZT

The more I read about the story, the more I feel Mistry was not the bad guy he was being portrayed as.

Yes, even though he came from the Shaponji group, he was an outsider in Ratan's circle of Yes men. He wanted to shut down Nano (JLR et all ) even at that time which did not go well with the old man. The other reason was him questioning Ratan's payout to DoCoMo which was not part of the original deal. This along with persistent rumors that Shaponji group wanted to increase its already sizable holding in Tata & Sons basically did him in.

But we are

[philipmathen]

If EV is the main driver, why not think out of the box and tie up with Tesla or the like. Tesla realistically won’t pass the price test here anyhow, so a win for all

[PearlJam]

Originally Posted by srini1785

Equally bad was their decision to take over the JLR with unfavorable terms which is now loosing money.

Sorry, this is not correct. Today, most businesses are struggling due to Covid 19.

JLR has contributed more than significant profits to the "consolidated" P & L statement of Tata Motors. There have been many quarters where standalone profits were terrible, but the consolidated profits due to JLR resulted in a decent final number.

Financial statements over the past few years confirm the same.

See https://www.businessinsider.in/busin...w/76370176.cms for just the last quarter.

[Lowflyer23]

Tata motors is like that student who comes out of addiction and all the wrong habits, makes his parents proud and gets a good job. Finally when everything is going good and smooth, he thinks of indulging into the old habits once again and ends up screwing up his life.
People who said support Tata and boycott Chinese...well sadly a business is a business. It takes decision based on profits and not on the sentiments of the people.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by srini1785

Sorry to say this but it was the Ratan's miscalculation which lead to this situation.

Agreed. Under Ratan Tata's leadership:

- Tata built the cheap quality Indica & Indigo which destroyed the company's reputation for quality. Even today, many people are apprehensive about the brand's cars due to the image created in the 2000s (despite Tata cars having improved so much).

- He made the statement of "1 lakh car" which was partially responsible for the Nano's death. It killed the car's image & desirability. That statement should never have been made.

- Under his leadership, Tata abandoned the highly lucrative MPV / UV / SUV segments, handing them over on a silver platter to the Bolero / Scorpio / others. After the Sumo & Safari in the '90s, the next UV was the Aria in 2010.

- He burned the Aria with over-ambitious pricing. The Aria was dead on day 1. See the trend? He killed Tata's two most ambitious projects in that decade, the Nano & Aria.

In fact, Tata Motors has started improving & made enormous strides after Ratan Tata moved out of an active role. The only good decision he made IMHO was buying Jaguar-Land Rover.

Note: This is NOT to bash the gentleman, but a very objective post about his business decisions. I respect him on a personal level and what he did for the Tata Group overall, but he really & royally botched up Tata Motors (ironically, the company he was most passionate about).

[padmrajravi]

Indica was their first monocoque car. They were truck manufacturers who modified light truck platforms to create passenger utility vehicles before that. So it was natural that Indica had quality problems. Even Hyundai went through a long streak of quality problems in US before their success and India entry. None of the other Indian manufacturers of those times still havent figured out the small car problem. Mahindra is still struggling with their KUV100. Force motors still havent cracked even the utility vehicle game. The only ones who could crack that segment other than Tata were the ones with foreign technology and significant headstart.

About the Nano, 1 lakh car was 'the vision'. The whole project was born out of that vision. I would not blame him for saying that out loud.

Agreed with Aria product management. Whoever was in charge of that should have been fired. Not only for pricing , but also for that design and expecting people to pay 20 lakhs for that design when fortuner was available at slighlty higher prices. If they had got the design right, that pricing would have been justified. In my mind it was not the pricing that killed Aria, but it was the design.

[DicKy]

Originally Posted by srini1785

Sorry to say this but it was the Ratan's miscalculation which lead to this situation. He was instrumental in opening PCV division and his dreams of a 1L car was just a bad business decision. Equally bad was their decision to take over the JLR with unfavorable terms which is now loosing money.... coupled with the mysterious "Tata culture" did not go well with independent observers.

Sorry, but it's this exact culture that resulted in Tata motors giving milestones for the Indian car market, while Hindustan motors has bitten the dust.
If it was not for his vision, Tata motors would have still been a profitable CV manufacturer alongwith AL. Mahindra may not have made the move to PVs. And we would have ended up like one of the ASEAN markets.

The dream of a 1 lakh car may have been a bad business decision, but it was a visionary one. Not going to stretch things, but the 1lakh car project inspired many automakers to the 'frugal engineering' concept of India. Prior to that almost all cars sold were hand me down previous generation models or just cars plucked from the international line-up without any consideration for Indian conditions. Though the 'frugal engineering' is rightly looked down now as an excuse for unsafe low cost cars, ones like Etios shows it can be done safely too.

The Nano may have failed. The frugally engineered Indian market cars didn't exactly take over the world.
But we did make our mark on automotive history, rather than being just another potential market waiting to be exploited.

JLR contributed positively more to TML than the present losses. Only negative being, Tata should have used JLR know how for its own use way earlier.

Originally Posted by GTO

- Under his leadership, Tata abandoned the highly lucrative MPV / UV / SUV segments, handing them over on a silver platter to the Bolero / Scorpio / others. After the Sumo & Safari in the '90s, the next UV was the Aria in 2010.

- He burned the Aria with over-ambitious pricing. The Aria was dead on day 1. See the trend? He killed Tata's two most ambitious projects in that decade, the Nano & Aria.
.

Agree with the above two points. They did give the UV segment on a silver platter to Mahindra, and the pricing/confused positioning of the Aria IMO set Tata motors further back than the Nano did.

Not only the ₹1 lakh statement. Most people who used commuter bikes wouldn't have shifted to the Nano for their daily drives. Our infra then or now isn't designed for it. (Parking woes)
Add to that the external factors. The massive fuel price jump around that period effectively killed the Nano's targeted utility factor. Add to that all of Didi tantrums, plant shift, quality lapse, fires etc.

Originally Posted by GTO

Agreed. Under Ratan Tata's leadership:

- Tata built the cheap quality Indica & Indigo which destroyed the company's reputation for quality. Even today, many people are apprehensive about the brand's cars due to the image created in the 2000s (despite Tata cars having improved so much).

Have to agree and disagree here.
Our '04 Tata Indicab was rattling under 10k kms, turning moody at 50k kms and outright falling apart at 100k kms. Was a taxi, but still it was pampered than our private car. Even then no good ROI for the care given.

Disagreeing with the above point. If it was any other result/profit oriented leader, they would have continued with CVs and not bothered with monocoque small cars. Atleast for some time.

Hyundai which had started with assembling Fords in the 60s and making their own cars in the late 70s with foreign help and Mitsubishi technology suffered from bad quality for a decade and half, but poor reputation for almost three decades.
All auto companies that came to India post 1984 were polished, their initial years behind or unknown to the Indian market.

While Tata and Mahindra had to start somewhere, (regarding PVs) not having the luxury of protected market or export encouragement that the East Asian markets had.
Not making an excuse for Tata's poor reliability record, but it's a phase most automakers go through.
Today more than the reliability concerns, it is the sales, after sales that Tata has to improve.

[srini1785]

Originally Posted by DicKy

The dream of a 1 lakh car may have been a bad business decision, but it was a visionary one.

Originally Posted by padmrajravi

About the Nano, 1 lakh car was 'the vision'. The whole project was born out of that vision

Originally Posted by padmrajravi

JLR and Nano sure were ambitious decisions, but I really respect the man for having the courage to pull it off. To me those decisions were more of visionary and India centric nature rather than a pure profit centric move.

Three quotes with the common word "Vision". If the vision of Ratan was get a family of 4 (or was it 3?, i don't remember) on a rain drenched motorcycle to the insides of a car then, it has failed to fulfill that vision. Last checked, motorcycles holding families have not taken to Nano as a natural progression. It has only become a second car for city roundabouts.

[padmrajravi]

Originally Posted by srini1785

Three quotes with the common word "Vision". If the vision of Ratan was get a family of 4 (or was it 3?, i don't remember) on a rain drenched motorcycle to the insides of a car then, it has failed to fulfill that vision.

Agreed, but that is the thing about visions sir. Some of them take longer to materialize or may not get materialized at all. But we respect the people who have visions and tried to get the ball rolling to make the world a slightly better place. That was the point.

[Cessna182]

Originally Posted by TorqueIndia

TML media statement on rumoured partnerships :

This lays all the rumors to rest at least for now.

To the people claiming that Nano is a failure and Tata's were destroyed under Sir Ratan Tata, I am actually shocked. Do you know how much the company gained in terms of R&D capabilities during that journey? Do you know how much international recognition (from engineers and scientists, not YouTube reviewers) the Nano has? It is literally the only contemporary symbol of India's manufacturing innovation today, besides the ISRO achievements and atomic energy research group activities. Folks who say that the Nano failed and TaMo should shut down are like the ones who'd say that ISRO should shut if one launch fails. Short term oriented.

Yes, the Indica and Indigo were bad in the initial years, but the eV2 versions were very good- it is not without reason that you still see them on the road with 300k plus kilometers and very low maintenance costs.

It's funny sometimes to think that people with just a keyboard and some opinions based on hearsay think they can do better than the army of strategists employed by the most respected industrial house in India which has perhaps done more for the country than many governments. A sincere request to not denigrate Sir RN Tata because he is one of the finest leaders this country has produced.

As for the Mistry episode, what are those guys doing in their own businesses? The last I read their company was busy selling assets to recover from the ratings downgrade over failed investments. It may be fashionable to dance to the call of the analysts and equity traders, but that does not create long term value. Tatas are the best example of long term value creation in India.

Edit: I have a Nano and I faced many issues with the first gen. All were due to horrid QC back then. The design was not at fault. In my interactions with TaMo employees, I understood that a lot more stringency was introduced after 2010. Earlier the QC managers were not accountable, hence the poor quality parts. Despite this, I believe that it was not the management strategy at fault. There were slippages in the culture, these are still being addressed.

Please delete if inappropriate. Thanks.