[rajeev k]

Escapade for Nano is upgrade on all fronts.

1. New more powerful and refined engine, Also a diesel option
2. Additional safey features as a marketing tool
3. Wider and larger dia tyres. This would give a muscular stance.
4. Cosmetic changes for that total turn on.
5. More appealing interiors including seats.

All these could bring about an upbeat in sales.

[Chopper]

I think the main factor would be price. Tata projected it as a 1 lakh rupee car but customer ended up paying more than that.
Tata should release a taxi version of Nano soon which could replace the Autorickshaws and this will help them to achieve the numbers

[arunkk]

Major issue with Nano as everyone feels is the image it brings. That of a cheap car and affects one's social image. The common man may better not buy a car than projecting himself to be poor.

And the solution I feel lies in a completely different marketing. Project it as a normal car that rich people buys as their 2nd or 3rd car for city drives (which is what happening right now). Show ad campaigns showing business men getting around hassle free in the crowded streets. Project its practicality and advertise more on the recent safety additions. Just try to change its image from a poor-man's car to a utility car.
The common man will buy it only if it is not perceived as a cheap car.

[anu21v]

Originally Posted by blue_pulsar

1. If someone can afford to travel at the fuel economy of 15kmpl, he can afford more than 2L for a car.

2. Someone who is used to 65kmpl from a Splendor cannot (or does not want to) spend more than 4 times on fuel

3. The initial idea from Ratan Tata was always flawed because of point 1 & 2.

absolutely spot on. +1

Going by my own experience, for long time i did not buy a car, even though I had Rs 3 lakh to spare on Alto VXI and was being paid car allowance as part of my salary, precisely for the above reasoning. I Kept on riding on bike and using a public transport in order to save money.

On owning a car the first decision comes from being able to "afford the Fuel bill".
If you can afford that bill then only comes the decision on buying "which car".


My advice to TML:
a) Take out the cheapness from Car. Don't offer black bumper without OSRVM the strip down version which is degrading its value
And
b) Product Endorsement is must. Bring Big-B to bend the buck.

[KumaravelS]

Originally Posted by avishar

In todays India,it is not that the bottom of the pyramid is the biggest market.We are an aspirational lot.If are going to buy something we will not be going automatically to the cheapest thing as a first buy but will wait untill we can buy something decent.

If you look at FMCG and consumer durable companies,the bulk of the sales come from mid to premium products.LCD sales have skyrocketed past flatscreens and curved screen tvs are almost existent.But there is still a 100 million households that are still without a TV,so that means there should be a huge market for a good,durable,cheap curved screen tv?No there isnt.
Remember the Bajaj BYK?The cheapest bike?It was a flop.

Wow. Dot on spot. Completely agree.

Originally Posted by indivic

1) Indica might have gotten a second chance with jingoistic pride sweeping the nation, in today's scenario most people were

No sir. When Indica was lauched and re-launched, were there any competitor in the segment? It is not the Jingoistic pride. For Jingoistic pride, people would not shell out huge money.

Originally Posted by indivic

Waiting to say here we go again, only Nano v2 will be relatively bug free so not worth buying before 1.5-2 years

True, lot of second car buyers would be waiting for this!!

Originally Posted by indivic

(2) Run a country wide road show (like Toyota have done to promote the Etios), explaining what the problems were and how they were fixed.
3) Reach out to the people who cancelled their bookings to find out why - was it low confidence on the product or was it because of finance, try to address that
5) Make a goodwill gesture to all the owners whose cars burned down - any other car from the stable at a price adjusted against the Nano. (they might have received insurance, but still)

Completely agree.

Originally Posted by blue_pulsar

1. If someone can afford to travel at the fuel economy of 15kmpl, he can afford more than 2L for a car.

2. Someone who is used to 65kmpl from a Splendor cannot (or does not want to) spend more than 4 times on fuel

Exactly. Its not only the entry cost, but the running cost.

Originally Posted by thedreamcatcher

1. The inital claim of stating that the car would cost just a lakh and then after adding up taxes, cost almost a lakh and a half, detered a lot of potential buyers. Remember, the segment he was tapping has a certain affordability level, where even an additional 25k or 50k makes a huge impact

2. If this car was sold at a fixed price of 1,00,00 or 99,999 fixed price, all inclusive, there probably would have been an exodus to the Tata showrooms.ut at nearly 1.5 to 2 lakhs, this shocked a lot of pople who immediately dropped the idea. How many times, people ending up going for the VXI equivalent versions, as the ZXI's are a tad bit unaffordable. Thats the same case here

Completely agree.

Originally Posted by RajaTaurus

Dear Mr. Tata, now that we have touched the ground from could nine, here are my two cents: Please go to Government, persuade them to make it strictly punishable offence with minimum of 1 month jail and 1 Lakh Rupees Fine if more than 2 persons riding on a 2 wheeler in India.
Then look where Nano is going to go!

OT. Whether it is Tata or anyone else, this is a must to implement. Seen many families going 2+2 on 2 wheeler, helmets on the mirror, small kid sleeping on the petrol tank, wify and kid at the back, bags hanging on the side, and on top of it, guy is talking and driving...

Originally Posted by rpmx1000

One month sales are low, an you write an obituary. Rather sadistic I feel, especially seeing the tone in which some people have written. Almost gleeful..Given time, it will succeed.

No sir... It is not the sadistic. On contrary it is feel good factor for Tata, that we all are pitching in and trying to do our bit of analysis and suggestions. Am sure, This thread would be keenly watched by TML and lessons would be taken into the drawing board.

Originally Posted by rpmx1000

Indians are not a great market to sell.

Hah!! India is still not a buyers market. Till our Per capita income matches global biggies, our market would be seller market.

how to go about..

Nano should be marketed in semi-urban and rural instead of urban

(*) Target families in urban who owns/wants a bike, would live a congested place, wherein bike parking in itself a problem. And even if they want to upgrade to a car and can afford to cost of the car + running cost, they cannot upgrade to running cost of upgrading to lifestyle (rent of house/street with parking + proximity to work, distance of such a place at affordable rent)
(*) In semi urban & rural places, they do travel less compared to urban so the running cost would not be as high as compared.
(*) Target families parents, grand pas who stay in semi-urban or rural place. They would have parking space
(*) Don't use urban models for promotion, use rural friendly models.

[Chetan_Rao]

This was bound to happen sooner or later. The reasons as I see them:

1. A mistake to position it as an aspirational car. As mentioned by various posters before me, Indians are very conscious of their social stature. It's not 'Wow! You can afford a 1 lakh car!', but 'you can only afford a 1 lakh car?'

2. They got the target segment horribly wrong. The bike-for-the-family guys can probably afford to buy the car, but what about the ownership costs? Just as an example, Nano might give 20 kmpl, as against an economy bike that can give 60 kmpl reasonably. That itself equates to 3 times rise in monthly fuel costs. You get the picture. They should target the college crowd and young professionals, who can't afford/don't need a bigger/pricier car at the moment.

3. All the incidents killed the reliability quotient. Cheap car = unsafe car? No thanks!! I'll save up and buy something I don't get killed in. Exaggeration maybe, but that's how the crowd reacts.

[srh]

A 500+ figure leads me to speculate the following:

1. New upgraded version may be coming up and the company is tooling up for that

2. Parts supply issue/ maintenance shut downs leading to low dispatches

3. Inventory correction with dealers. Maybe they over estimated demand in earlier months

[anu21v]

Originally Posted by srh

A 500+ figure leads me to speculate the following:

1. New upgraded version may be coming up and the company is tooling up for that

2. Parts supply issue/ maintenance shut downs leading to low dispatches

3. Inventory correction with dealers. Maybe they over estimated demand in earlier months

A&B probably.


but C totally improbable.

Going by the fact that there was a confirmed order book to be supplied initially, there was no scope of having any dealer inventory at all.

[SinghBHP]

The first and most important point is that it is not a 1 LAKH as it was promoted by TML. One of the Hindi News channel even named it as "LAKHTAKIYA" and then kept on repoting about it's launch, delivery, first buyer etc. for days. However, when you go to buy it in the market even the cheapest version costs little less than Maruti 800 (during that time 800 was existing) and the other higher versions were costing little less than Maruti Alto. So the overall USP of the car was "1 Lakh " which it was not true hence it got the competition from Martui 800 and second hand Altos which were more reliable and have proven their mettle in the Market. Maruti 800 and Alto were True Indian Middle Class Family cars, even the layers upper than Middle class were using it.
Then came the news that Maruti 800 will be discontinued, I thought that this will help the sale of NANO a little. But, But with it also came new of NANOs burning by itself and even couple of people lost their lives in it. This I think have created serious dent in the already dwindling sales of NANO.

So, in my opinion Tata should :
>> Either Improve the Quality of NANO, improve safety, make it little more stylish, may be a 2 door car (it will excite students, young crowd) like in Foreign countries.

>> OR if they want to continue with same style then reduce the price, it should actually bring it very very near to 1 Lakh. And also fix the fire catching issues and safety issues.

[HammerHead]

IMO, in fit and finish, Nano scores over Indica, at least the exteriors.


Since they said its a '1 lakh' car they should have maintained 1 lakh price tag for the base version. If that was not possible then they shouldn't have advertise it at 1 lakh car and target customer is 2 wheeler owners.

Or

They should have launched a proper car, proper means a car sounding like a car having engine at the front and boot space at the back at price less then M800.

[sathyaprakash]

OK to be in the lighter vein i recommend the following suggestions or sollutions 1. Ratan Tata should make this car as his personal vehicle till his death to prove others its trust worthines, 2. Ask all Tata associate companies staff to follow Ratan Tata for thier transport, 3. Bring in PR persons like Radia to change Goverment policies to abolish all kind of taxes & bring 50% incentives for NANO which will reduce the car price by half, 4. True to the name (peoples car) Ratan Tata should start giving Nano free to the needy people of this nation out of his own wealth as Wipro chairman Premji this will defenietly help in the sales, 5. Bring in A.RAJA as brand Ambassador for the car as IMO he is the well known figure now, 6. Announce festival offers like BUY ONE get ONE FREE, 7. Bring in 4 or more fire Extingishers as freebies along with the car, 8. Add Nine speakers with surround sound to cancel the Engine noice even head phones will help, 9. Add an extra boot as in DEZIRE to Swift for Nano and call it wisely as WIZERE, 10. Add extra Tyres at back but reduce the Seat No. to make it an ATV.

[veyron_head]

First things first, you CANNOT sell a '1 lac rupee' car for 2 lacs. For a first time car buyer this will be a huge shocker.

Two, Sealed boot door is an insane idea. Its not a car anymore.

Three, I was talking to a guy who said he is not willing to buy a Nano because 'there is a long queue'. I guess he is not alone. The common man who doesn't know beans about whats going on in the Auto industry, could still be thinking its not available off the shelf. The ad campaign by TM to alleviate this concern was rather very minimal.

Here is my 2 cents on what could be done:

Take the '1 lakh car' off the Nano. Since they are not able to sell even the base version for 1 lac, they should rather focus on other credentials of the car like its low running costs (compared to other cars , not bikes), Small yet spacious, good city runabout etc.

They should also consider a fully loaded Nano with PS, PW and a openable hatch. A diesel engine with a fully loaded nano with a price tag of 3 lacs would be a terrific combo.

This would place Nano on par with other cars except for price, which would be in their favor. The idea is to make the customer think of Nano and Alto as two equal alternatives, and eventually choose Nano because of its price.

[Nissan1180]

It's indeed sad that a remarkably well packaged product like the Nano has clocked such dismal sales figures.
I'd like to share my experience at the Tata dealership, where we went to test drive the vehicle.
We were looking for a budget (1 to 1.5 lakh) car which would be used in Kolkata. Among the most probable choices were a Nano CX and a a few good 800's at the true value dealerships. The Nano appealed more to us, primarily because Tata's are not known to compromise on quality, and they were offering a 3 year warranty.
The drive began. The test car had a notchy gearshift, and the clutch was behaving awkwardly. The attendant said that this vehicle had been to many 'expo's where it was roughly driven'.
As we continued on the highway, the speedo touched 80, and he began " Sir, this vehicle does not sway due to winds at high speeds, like some people say." He also made a mention of how the fire incidents had occured (his own interpretations).
The irony was that we were thoroughly enjoying the vehicle, and these impertinent questions had not been raised.
When we went to inspect the interiors in the showroom, the guy said that the car could be serviced only at selected Tata workshops, and the engine bay 'cannot' be opened elsewhere.
It may appear that the first was shear callousness, the second was to relieve the paranoia that some may be suffering from. But the third? A non techncal person may be driven to believe that maintenance would be difficult!
Also, how would a consumer who knows nothing about cars react upon hearing that the car should sway at high speeds? What would he think upon hearing that only Tata dealerships had the expertise of accessing the engine compartment? I doubt if he'd feel comfortable.

There is another dimension to the problem: Why ignore the fact that today, driving about 50-60 km to work daily is not uncommon and thereby condone the need for a larger fuel tank?
The company believed that the product will be enough to convince the consumer. What they didn't forsee is that people believe the 800 to be a "normal" car, while the tiny fuel tank, customized audio deck and small tyres make the Nano seem something less mature.

[mgh]

We will know in a month or two, whether the sales figure is abnormal or not. One possibility maybe that the dealers were busy with the free upgrade announced, and cannot cope with new car orders at the same time.

[sureshkishore]

Originally Posted by sathyaprakash

OK to be in the lighter vein i recommend the following suggestions or sollutions .

There are plenty of Nano Jokes in the jokes thread. Think this post also belongs there.

The Nano was engineered bit by bit to be a Low Cost product. It was a remarkable engineering achievement.
Now adding more goodies (like power steering/bigger engine) to the car would increase its cost further up. Say 2.2 lakh range.

A new Indica xeta @ 2.75 Lakh. is a car that had been engineered with a much higher budget which would translate to a more bigger, safer, reliable, comfortable car.
Now for a prospective buyer the choice is obvious.