Tag Archive for ‘Nano’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Nano'

Ratan Tata successor could be an expat

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on November 19, 2009

in Business and India

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Tata Group Chairman speaks to Paul Beckett of the Wall Street Journal:

WSJ: How are you conducting the search for your successor and when do you expect a decision to be made?

Mr. Tata:We are in the process of formalizing a successor to me. We have some outside consultants and a formal search process is on. There are no constraints. We are looking both within the organization and outside. The successor, I would hope, would have integrity and our value systems in the forefront and hopefully would carry on the path that we have tried to set for the company’s growth.

I would hope that there would not be a major disagreement in the way that we have operated. Otherwise, we will have some other disruption in what we do.In terms of who that successor might be, it could be he or she, it could be an internal or an external candidate. It would certainly be easier if that candidate were an Indian national. But now that 65% of our revenues come from overseas, it could also be an expatriate sitting in that position with justification now that we are a company that has global reach and global presence.

Click here to go to WSJ for full interview

Test-driving the world’s cheapest car

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on March 25, 2009

in India and Innovation

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The Guardian’s Randeep Ramesh finds Tata’s Nano “striking if not beautiful and does the job of people’s car admirably.”

Its perky ride is partly down to the lightweight all-steel frame that keeps the car’s weight at just 600kg. Bumping up and down Pune’s older potholed highways proves that the car’s suspension can take on India’s decrepit infrastructure.

The Nano resembles Doctor Who’s Tardis. Outside it is just three metres long – smaller than hatchbacks such as the Fiat Panda and the Toyota Yaris and only a tad longer than the original Mini. Inside, the Nano is big enough for four 1.8 metre-tall (6ft) adults to sit in comfort. At 5ft 10in, I had plenty of room. What is amazing is the Nano’s turning circle – its tiny wheels can spin it around in the same space as a London black cab.

Forget small cars, India is a nation of two-wheelers

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on March 25, 2009

in Business and India

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Pawan Munjal, mananging director and chief executive of Hero Honda Motors, in The Asian Wall Street Journal:

India on an average sells approximately seven million motorcycles and scooters every year compared to about 1.5 million passenger vehicles, making it the second biggest two-wheeler market in the world, behind China. And still, according to the latest estimates, only 23% of urban households and less than 10% of rural households own a two-wheeler. These penetration levels are only a fraction of the levels in other developing Southeast Asian Countries. The penetration of two-wheelers in Indonesia is three times that in India. In Thailand and Malaysia, it is more than six times.

There are more than seven million new bicycle users every year in India, and most of them aspire to upgrade to two-wheelers. The growing aspirations, expanding road networks and growth of satellite townships are factors further spurring two-wheeler demand.

India’s car for the people

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on March 21, 2009

in Business, India and Innovation

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From the Tata Nano website.

Tata Motors will launch the much awaited Nano, slated to be the world’s cheapest car priced at Rs 1 lakh (less than $2,000), at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai on Monday afternoon. Bookings will start in April.

The Tata Nano will initially be available in three models – the Nano (base model), the CX (mid-level model) and LX (top-end model). Click here for Nano specifications.

MSN News has a comprehensive story that tells you pretty much everything about the aspirational car, how to book one, what does it mean for the used-car market, and will people switch from two-wheelers.

Read also The National for more on “India’s equivalent to the Volkswagen Beetle and the original Mini,” the competition, and what it means for the already-choked roads of India’s cities:

Tata Motors chairman Ratan Tata

“Currently, there are about seven cars for every 1,000 people in India, compared to 600 to 800 cars per 1,000 in developed countries. Tata is banking on the logic that if it offers a car that is marginally more expensive than a scooter, Indians will buy it.”

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Nano symbolizes the global auto industry’s rush to create affordable, lower-emission vehicles to tap developing nations from India to Brazil. Should the car succeed, it could represent the coming-of-age of modern India’s manufacturing prowess.

“But going by the auto industry’s experience with small cars, the upstart Nano won’t be much of a money-spinner. Manufacturers have traditionally made razor-thin margins on smaller cars, using them more to capture younger buyers in the hopes they will move up to more profitable models as they grow in age and wealth.

What Can Tata’s Nano Teach Detroit? BusinessWeek says U.S. carmakers would do well to learn from the innovations that brought it about:

“For Detroit’s Big Three, those first two lessons are easy compared with the third from the Tata Nano: Rethinking the supply chain. Looking upstream, Tata brought in suppliers such as Bosch, a German maker of appliances and motors, and Delphi, a world leader in automotive parts (and onetime subsidiary of GM), in early-stage design, challenging them to be full partners in the Nano innovation by developing lower-cost components.”

And in the Economic Times, Tata Motors CEO Ratan Tata on cars beyond Nano:

I think the next challenge would be to live up to the peoples aspirations. To make the experience of buying, owning, servicing and supporting the Nano different from what you might have experienced. At the same time, the challenge will also be to have people understand that the Nano is not a Honda, not a Toyota.

It is a low cost car and while there might not be any deficiencies, it might have some lack of refinement which will go with a low cost product, but surely won’t be a deficiency as such. I don’t think there’s been a car in India that’s planned to be produced in this kind of volume. It is therefore important for us to maintain a sustained quality from our suppliers and our own ability to meet product standards. All these issues should be very challenging.

Tata forced to relocate ‘people’s car’ plant

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on October 4, 2008

in Business and Politics

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From a story headlined “Bullet into Bengal’s soul” in The Telegraph, Calcutta:

Ratan Tata with Nano

Bengal’s symbol of industrial resurgence, the Nano, died a violent death today, the trigger pulled by Mamata Banerjee, Ratan Tata said.

After a meeting with chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Tata said: “Two years ago, I said if somebody puts a gun to my head, you would either have to remove the gun or pull the trigger. I would not move my head. I think Ms Banerjee pulled the trigger.” More:

Also in The Telegraph transcript of Ratan Tata’s media conference:”This is a decision we have taken with a great deal of sadness…” Click here for more

Indians count cost of pyrrhic victory over Tata

Amy Kazmin in Financial Times:

Rising from the lush green paddy fields 40 kilometres from India’s decrepit former colonial capital Calcutta, Tata Motors’ flagship Nano car factory was expected to bring jobs and prosperity to a region little touched so far by the forces of globalisation now transforming other parts of India.

Instead, the high-profile plant in Singur – where Tata planned to produce the world’s cheapest car for India and for export – foundered on resistance of farmers such as 55-year-old Prabhat Shi, who saw little role for himself in the industrial sector, and preferred to cling to time-tested ways of living.

Previously in AW: Time to say tata & bye bye?

Time to say tata & bye bye?

Published

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on August 23, 2008

in Business

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Hours after Ratan Tata, chairman of India’s Tata conglomerate, threatened to pull out of his Rs one-lakh ($2,500) Nano car project from Singur, West Bengal, other state governments — most notably Maharashtra, Orissa and Punjab — have rushed forward with invitations to Tata’s boss to set up the project in their state instead.

In West Bengal, however, Mamata Banerjee, leader of the state opposition party Trinamool Congress, stands firm and insists that 400 acres of land acquired from farmers by the Tatas be returned to them. But, here’s the twist to the tale, the farmers of Singur don’t want the Tatas to leave, reports The Indian Express

In a twist of the tale, a day after Ratan Tata threatened to pull out of the ‘Nano’ project in Singur, farmers whose land have been acquired do not want the Tata Motors Limited Chairman to leave as they believe industrialisation would improve their lot.

Marginal land owner Debaprasad Das whose 0.75 acres was taken for the project, but who had not taken his cheque as he had supported the agitation against land acquisition, said he wanted industrialisation.

Tata lands Rover and Jaguar

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on March 26, 2008

in Business

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Ford on Wednesday confirmed that it has agreed to sell its luxury UK-based car brands Land Rover and Jaguar marques to Indian group Tata for $2.3bn (£1.15bn). In The Guardian, UK, Randeep Ramesh reports from Mumbai on how Tata has persevered – and largely succeeded:

When Italy’s L’Expresso magazine last month splashed with the news that Ratan Tata (photo), chairman of India’s Tata group, was going to buy up luxury car marque Ferrari the story made front page news across the world.

Although later denied, what was surprising was no one thought a bid from Mumbai’s Tata for Milan’s most wanted brand implausible. After all Tata had spent £6.7bn buying Anglo-Dutch rival Corus. It was certain to snap up Jaguar and Land Rover.

Few remember that Tata’s first car 10 years ago, the Indica, was little more than a noisy box on wheels. It was instantly dubbed “Ratan’s folly”.

Tata buys into 40 years of trouble

In Fortune, John Elliott has a word, or two, of warning for Ratan Tata

Ratan Tata, who runs the Tata Group, one of India’s two biggest conglomerates, is buying into a history of trouble with his $2.3 billion cash deal, announced today, to acquire the Jaguar and Land-Rover companies from Ford (F). Transfer of ownership to Tata Motors is due to be completed by the end of June, and the question is whether Tata can then break a cycle of decline.

It’s been 40 years since the British government, in a bid to rebuild the country’s automobile industry, cobbled together ailing car brands such as Jaguar, Rover, Austin, Morris and Riley into a giant called British Leyland. BL, as it became known, was a failure, mainly because of endemic labor problems, uninspired products and poor quality. Since 1968, there have been many rescue attempts, but only rare short bursts of success. Several of the once proud names are long forgotten and none is British-owned; the iconic MG brand was bought three years ago by China’s Nanjing Automobile to make sports cars in China and the U.K., and the Morris Mini cult car is with BMW.

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Previously on Asian Window:

After Nano, the “People’s Car”, comes a $20 “People’s Phone” from India

Published

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on March 13, 2008

in Technology

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The cellphone from Spice has no flips, folds or slides – not even a screen. In International herald Tribune:

It looks a bit like a child’s toy, a walkie-talkie circa 1975, a cheap plastic throwback to the good old days when telephones were made for talking.

But to Spice Ltd., a telecommunications company in the world’s fastest-growing phone market, this new product embodies the latest, greatest innovation in cellphone technology today: a handset priced at less than $20.

Spice, which is based in Noida, India, unveiled what it is branding “the People’s Phone” at a wireless industry conference in Barcelona last month. The handset is an anomaly among mobile phones today: The number keys are big and bold. It is chunky and has no color screen – in fact, it has no screen at all. Nothing about it flips, folds or slides. It is, as Spice’s chairman, Bhupendra Kumar Modi, described it, “just a phone.”

The Tata invasion

Published

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on January 22, 2008

in Business

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James Surowiecki in the New Yorker

Americans are used to foreign cars—nearly half of us, after all, drive one—but no American has yet seen a vehicle bearing the brand name Tata Motors tooling along the highway. So when, a few weeks ago, news broke that this same Tata Motors, an Indian auto company, was close to buying Jaguar and Land Rover, the first reaction of many was “Who?” The implausibility of the bid was magnified when Tata rolled out its newest product, a tiny, stripped-down car that will sell for a mere twenty-five hundred dollars. The spectacle of a low-end specialist trying to buy a couple of established luxury brands looked to some like a cubic-zirconium peddler making a play for Tiffany.

India arrives

Published

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on January 13, 2008

in Cricket

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Times of India

Swapan Dasgupta relates Indian aggression at the Sydney cricket ground to the rise in nationalism

There were two powerful images of India that came through from Sydney Cricket Ground last week. The first was a visibly irate Harbhajan Singh in a verbal altercation with Andrew Symonds. The second was a very composed but undeniably haughty Anil Kumble throwing a variant of Bill Woodfull’s legendary remark on Bodyline back at the Australians: “There are two teams out there; only one is playing cricket.”

Cricket, once a metaphor for life, has increasingly become associated with the national character. In the heydays of socialism and the shortage economy, it is unlikely an Indian player would have reacted to Australian sledging the way Harbhajan did. It is more inconceivable that the captain would have had the temerity to call the rival team a bunch of cheats – which is what Kumble did with all the imperiousness at his disposal.

Continue reading ‘India arrives’

India driving

Published

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on January 12, 2008

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Hindustan Times

The launch of Tata’s Nano marks the beginning of the end of an India shaped only by the privileged few writes Barkha Dutt

If the travels of a country were to be chronicled by its cars, in the journey from the Ambassador to the Nano is, perhaps, the story of India’s evolution as a nation.

When Hindustan Motors rolled out the first Ambassador Car in 1957 its sturdy body, rounded contours and Mother Earth simplicity immediately bagged it a place in our collective consciousness. Fifty years on, its unchanging form, plodding-yet-comfortable manner and homegrown efficiency has imbued the Ambassador with a sepia-tinted nostalgia. The ‘Amby’ may have been modelled on the Morris Oxford but for most of us, it is quintessentially and uniquely Indian and marks a milestone in our growth as an industrialised country. Continue reading ‘India driving’

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