Tata Motors shareholders now offered the Nano at reduced rates
The next sales strategy that Tata Motors has adopted is to woo its share holders who number around 3.5 lakhs to buy the Nano. Of course, for this they are doling out a heavy discount to lure the buyers. All this, with the aim to boost sales of the Nano which has shown a sharp decline in the last three months.
This move comes after Tata Motors had extended such discounted offers to its own employees including those employed in its ancillary groups. For the employees the company was offering the high end variant of the Nano with price discounted by Rs. 25,000 on its showroom price tag of Rs.2.11 lakh. This is the cost of the car at Mumbai. The discount will however be of a slightly lesser amount in the case of the shareholders is what some sources have informed.
The Nano has been one of Ratan Tata’s dream project which was first announced in 2005 while the first Nano was launched in the January of 2008 at Delhi.
Tata Motors have set up their plant at Sanand Gujarat for the manufacture of the Nano at a cost of Rs 52,136 crore. The plant has a full capacity of producing 250,000 cars per year. With the slowdown in sales, the plant produced just 56,886 units last year which in turn has led to accumulation of inventory. To adjust this inventory layout they had to shut down the plant for two weeks in the month of August this year.
It is not just one singular aspect that is affecting the sales of the Nano car but a combination of factors like economic slowdown, increased fuel price as also the cost of material and components that goes in to make the car has been the reason for this dismal performance of the car in the market.
In fact, Nano has recorded a sale of just 1,202 units in August which translates to a dip by 85 per cent when compared to the sales figures for the same month last year. The total sales of Tata Motor have also taken a beating with a decline of 3 percent being recorded. Sales of small car have also recorded a dip by 64 percent in the month of July this year with Nano sales itself dipping by 29 percent.
For Ratan Tata the game of boosting sales has been a continuous process. Being his personal dream and to be the alternative to the two wheeler he is now personally monitoring the entire scenario to come up with a viable solution to the sales problem at hand.
He has taken it up personally, visiting the sites where the car is being sold and interacting with customers both present and probable to get to the crux of the reason for its poor performance.
He has also added a personal signature upon the dashboard of the car in its special edition format to help try boosting employee interest to buy the car.
The company is also now looking across its present geographical borders to locate and establish selling points in Indonesia, Eastern Europe and also Brazil as well as Southeast Asia.
At the last annual general meeting of Tata Motors, Ratan Tata mentioned, “The Nano is being sold in Sri Lanka and Nepal. We are looking at assembly facilities possibly in Indonesia and some parts of Eastern Europe. On the whole, we are looking at how we can maximize the penetration of the Nano and some of the other products such as the Ace.”
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