Tata Nano

  Indian car industry is really going through the toughest time in last one decade owing to a net  increase in petrol prices By Rs 5/L. Although there are chances that today petrol prices may come down by Rs 2/L .However another news came day before yesterday that oil ministry has advised finance minister to put up an excise duty of Rs 1,70,000 on small diesel cars and Rs 2,50,000 on sedans and SUVs. However, The amount is too big but justified considering that diesel consumption has increased because of these Big SUVs. If this thing is implemented Petrol cars whose sales were down will again be back in competition.

One petrol car which i want to discuss today is Tata nano,the world's cheapest car.  Ratan Tata  surprised everybody when He announced 7-8 years back that his company tata motors will launch a car with a price tag of Rs 1 lac.Many big automakers thought this as unachievable and It is not possible to make a car with a price tag of Rs 1 Lac supporting Bharat 4 norms. But january 2008, tata nano was launched in delhi auto expo and automobile journalists from all over the world were in delhi to cover the event.Although the car was launched on the 100th anniversary of Model T car( to know about T car follow this wiki link henry ford's T-CAR), just like T-car created a storm in American market in 1908 catering to middle class population of America , the same ratan tata had expected form NANO.

Tata nano did not have a good start, It was supposed to be made in singur,west bengal  but protests from mamta banerjee forced tata motors to shift its factory to Sanand, Gujrat, The car which was supposed to be lauched in oct 2008 was then lauched in march 2009. Few months into the launch the car was available only through bookings and initially few cars(only few,not more than 4-5) were burnt while being on roads and this did not go well with Indian consumers and many people cancelled their bookings.This was the first impact which lead to low sales of tata nano over the years. However, i think there could be more reasons which were responsible for low sales of Tata nano..

1. Indian economy had undergone a sea change from 2003 to 2009( till the time Car was officially launched) , Per capita income had increased by more than twice the amount. M800 was no more the largest selling car and it was replaced with Alto which was priced 30k higher( and also it was revealed that alto VX priced almost 2.9 Lacs was the largest selling model within ALTO). Now with the car like Nano existing car owners did not show keen interest in it.

2. The car initially was marketed in such a way that its a car for low middle class income people which did not go well with the indian consumers who always feel pride in buying whatever they buy.People started calling it as Poor man's car.

3. The increase in price of petrol was also a big reason why people did not buy this car as the main target group of this car were those people who were most price sensitive towards petrol.

however the company has launched its revamped model Nano 2012 and also changed its marketing strategy with their new ad campaign involving youngsters, Before this they also had an advertisement in which they highlighted the problems faced by two-wheelers,that was a very good campaign.Hope tata Nano receives good response  in future and its sales in last few months have been good too( considering that all petrol car sales are declining, but nano sales are constant ).