Ratan Tata feels sorry for marketing Nano as the cheapest car

Ahmedabad, 30 November 2013

In an interview to CNBC, Ratan Tata said the marketing around the Nano as the world’s cheapest car is partly to blame for its failure to gain popularity. Tata said he believes the mini-car still has the potential to take off in the home market.

“I always felt the Nano should have been marketed towards the owner of a two-wheeler because it was conceived to give people who rode on two-wheeler an all-weather, safe form of transportation, not (the) cheapest. It became termed as the cheapest car by the public, and [also] I’m sorry to say, by the company when it was being marketed,” he said.

“We are trying to re-launch Nano with some differences. The company has plans to launch the Nano outside of the Indian market. There’s a lot of interest in Nano outside India. Maybe, we can launch in another country like Indonesia, where it doesn’t have the stigma or maybe it can be marketed in Europe as a changed product,” he added.

Sales of Tata Nano plunged 74 percent on-year during the April-September period to 10,202 units.In October, Tata Motors introduced the Nano CNG emax version of Nano that can run on either gasoline or compressed natural gas. Tata Motors is also slated to launch a diesel-powered version of the vehicle by the end of March 2014.