At 6:46 p.m. Thursday, R. Sampathkumar signed a check for 3,809 rupees ($78) and ordered his first car: a Tata Nano. Bookings for the ultracheap car, which retails for 100,000 rupees ($2,050) plus tax and transport fees, opened Thursday across India. Sampathkumar, who is 30 years old and single, makes about 20,000 rupees a month ($410) as a goldsmith and says he wants a Nano for "status." "Automatically, women will come forward," he said, grinning.
Dozens gathered Thursday to gawk at the silver Nano sitting on a red platform with pink satin skirting at the Tata dealership in Coimbatore, a mid-sized manufacturing hub in southern India. Two DJs blasted Backstreet Boys, Ricky Martin and Madonna songs, while college kids snapped photos of the snub-nosed car on their cell phones. Despite the festivities, analysts say Nano sales won't do much in the short term to help debt-strapped Tata Motors, which is facing falling sales and is in talks with banks to refinance a $2 billion loan it took out to buy Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford last year.
Vaishali Jajoo, auto analyst at Mumbai's Angel Broking, estimated that even if Tata Motors manages to sell 250,000 Nanos a year, it will only add 3 percent to the company's total revenues. Production constraints mean Sampathkumar won't get his new Nano until July, at the earliest. Violent farmer protests forced Tata to relocate at the last minute a factory that was to exclusively build Nanos, and the replacement won't be operational before year's end. Customers who want to buy the Nano must pay 300 rupees for an application form, then pay the entire cost of the car or get financing from one of 18 banks Tata Motors made special arrangements with.
Tata will accept orders until April 25 and then randomly select 100,000 people who will get the first shipment of vehicles. Everyone else will have to wait. Tata will pay interest on booking deposits: 8.5 percent for people who have to wait one to two years to get their Nano, and 8.75 percent for those who hold out longer. Tata spokesman Debasis Ray said the company would not release data on the number of orders until after the process closed, but added that "the signs are encouraging."
He said 300,000 people had visited Tata's 400 showrooms across the country since the car went on display April 1. In the last two weeks, the Nano Web site has gotten 20 million hits, he said.
K. Thamilarasu, the divisional sales manager for Tata Motors in Coimbatore, said 21 people paid for the car in full at his dealership Thursday. Another 19 made downpayments for financing arrangements.
"I have been in this field three decades," Thamilarasu said. "This is the first time we are noticing a revolution." Rajeswari Nandagopal, a teacher, paid 300 rupees for a booking form because she wants to buy a Nano for her son, 17, who currently rides a motorbike. "These days going on two-wheelers is a great risk," she said. J. Rathimasawamy, 70, a retired schoolmaster, said he sold his Maruti WagonR two months ago because he wants to buy a Nano. "It's the cheapest," he said.
Rathimasawamy, a wiry man with white hair and a dusty pair of flip-flops, took a bus from his home 25 miles (40 kilometers) away to buy a booking form. Vijayakumar Jayabal, 50, a policeman who earns 12,000 rupees ($246) a month, said he wants to buy a Nano because he can't squeeze his family of four onto his motorbike. "We only fit three people maximum," he said.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Bookings for Tata Nano begin tomorrow
Tata Motors were set to accept the application forms for the world's cheapest car, the 624-cc jelly-bean shaped Nano, from Thursday in what will be the steepest booking fee charged in India for an automobile. Over the next 17 days, prospective buyers can buy application forms for Rs.300 each and apply with an upfront payment of around Rs.95,000 - or Rs.2,999, if they wish to get it financed, company officials said. That alone will not assure them the car, which group chairman Ratan Tata had promised to deliver at Rs.100,000 ($2,000) at factory gates - and which he had managed to keep amid awe and admiration of the global automobile industry.
The company, which had to shift its upcoming Nano factory out of Singur in West Bengal last October after some protests over farmland acquired by the state government for the project, has earmarked just 100,000 vehicles for the first phase. So a lottery will decide the lucky ones who will drive out the Nano - the result of a Rs.20-billion investment, and five years of research and development by a 500-member team, which even fetched them 34 patents.
"We have already sold 50,000 forms at our dealerships. This figure does not include the sale at our Westside apparel stores and Croma appliance outlets," said an official with Tata Motors in Mumbai. "State Bank of India will begin the sale of forms from tomorrow," the official said, adding some 1,350 branches of the commercial bank in 850 cities would assist the booking process.
"We have sold some 500 forms at our three showrooms in Delhi and the figure is likely to go up next week as the submission process begins to hot up," said Ravi Bhattacharya, Nano sales manager with Autolink Delhi. He said that ever since the car was commercially launched, his outlets received at least 100-200 unique enquiries daily. His firm has decided to deploy additional salespeople to handle the expected rush for the bookings. Tata Motors - part of India's largest industrial house, the $62.5-billion Tata group - also has on offer online bookings for the Nano, the first such option in India. An online application will cost Rs.200.
Along with the provision to retail co-branded Nano merchandise such as watches, T-shirts and phones on the Internet, the dedicated website for the "people's car" has a section to apply online, with a secure payments gateway.
Bhattacharya said most customers were looking at getting their Nano financed. "Majority of the clientele is wary of the huge booking amount and is hence enquiring about the financing options available for the car." Tatas have also tied up with 15 national banks such as Bank of Baroda, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India and Dena Bank to facilitate the easy disbursement of loans for its vehicles.
Winners from the draw of lots would be announced 60 days after the bookings close April 25 and customers can drive the Nano out of showrooms from July. The first set of cars is being manufactured at Pantnagar in Uttarakhand and Pune in Maharashtra. Eventually, it will roll out from the new project site at Sanand in Gujarat, some 45 km from the state's commercial capital Ahmedabad. This site will initially produce 250,000 cars, going up to 500,000 units by the end of next year.
The company, which had to shift its upcoming Nano factory out of Singur in West Bengal last October after some protests over farmland acquired by the state government for the project, has earmarked just 100,000 vehicles for the first phase. So a lottery will decide the lucky ones who will drive out the Nano - the result of a Rs.20-billion investment, and five years of research and development by a 500-member team, which even fetched them 34 patents.
"We have already sold 50,000 forms at our dealerships. This figure does not include the sale at our Westside apparel stores and Croma appliance outlets," said an official with Tata Motors in Mumbai. "State Bank of India will begin the sale of forms from tomorrow," the official said, adding some 1,350 branches of the commercial bank in 850 cities would assist the booking process.
"We have sold some 500 forms at our three showrooms in Delhi and the figure is likely to go up next week as the submission process begins to hot up," said Ravi Bhattacharya, Nano sales manager with Autolink Delhi. He said that ever since the car was commercially launched, his outlets received at least 100-200 unique enquiries daily. His firm has decided to deploy additional salespeople to handle the expected rush for the bookings. Tata Motors - part of India's largest industrial house, the $62.5-billion Tata group - also has on offer online bookings for the Nano, the first such option in India. An online application will cost Rs.200.
Along with the provision to retail co-branded Nano merchandise such as watches, T-shirts and phones on the Internet, the dedicated website for the "people's car" has a section to apply online, with a secure payments gateway.
Bhattacharya said most customers were looking at getting their Nano financed. "Majority of the clientele is wary of the huge booking amount and is hence enquiring about the financing options available for the car." Tatas have also tied up with 15 national banks such as Bank of Baroda, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India and Dena Bank to facilitate the easy disbursement of loans for its vehicles.
Winners from the draw of lots would be announced 60 days after the bookings close April 25 and customers can drive the Nano out of showrooms from July. The first set of cars is being manufactured at Pantnagar in Uttarakhand and Pune in Maharashtra. Eventually, it will roll out from the new project site at Sanand in Gujarat, some 45 km from the state's commercial capital Ahmedabad. This site will initially produce 250,000 cars, going up to 500,000 units by the end of next year.
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