[TorqueLord]

While I am no expert on TaMo, the people I speak to in my circle who have had Tata cars are not too happy. My brother-in-law had a Tata Tiago as a city beater second car, and he sold it off in < 3 years as the car was proving to be a gas guzzler, product quality was pathetic and had rattles everywhere and was falling apar. The servicing was not cheap either, apparently the yearly servicing costs was Rs 15,000+! He sold it and got a Celerio and couldn't be happier. Same with a friend who owns a Harrier and is not too happy with the quality and the servicing and is looking to dispose it off asap.

As for me when I was in the market to buy a car, I started off with the Punch - thought it would be a safe car for a new driver like me and wouldn't be too expensive to buy plus it seemed to have a lot of features. I had gone with an intent to book, but the SA behavior was pathetic. My Aadhar address was from out of state and he pressured me to change it to the rental address I was staying in, which I didn't want to. Moreover he lied to me saying that out of state Aadhar addresses cannot be used. He also wanted me to pay Rs 25,000 as a booking amount, which I knew was wrong as the booking amount is Rs 11,000.

To fact check his claim about not being able to register the car as my Aadhar was out of state, I went next to the Maruti showroom and the SA said there is no problem with having an out of state Aadhar. The general demeanor, the attitude of the SA, the honesty and transparency was a complete contrast to my TaMo experience and was as different as night and day. I ended up booking the Brezza then and there (I ended up buying a Slavia, but story for another day) and I swore I will never buy a Tata product again.
When I cancelled my Brezza booking, I promptly got the refund minus the cancellation fee. My dad had booked an Ignis from one of the showrooms in our native, when he cancelled the booking he got all his money book, even the Rs 500 was not deduced.

My assessment of why Tata is like this? I think this has something to do with their culture. As Telco they were essentially a CV seller, and that too pretty much in a duopoly with Ashok Leyland, hence they never had to compete in a free market. The TATA trucks got the job done. And this probably dictated their culture - things had to be "good enough" and you didn't need to excel. Additionally, the CV scale is far lower than the PV scale hence the scale-up of supply chain, QC was more incremental than a step jump, which they could manage. They also probably had good B2B relationships - with fleet operators, with government buyers, with industrial giants etc. Hence, even today they are the largest CV player in India.

If I remember correctly (please correct me if I am wrong), t the existing CV dealers were also given the PV dealerships when Tata forayed into selling PVs, and the CV dealers just didn't have the customer service DNA required to succeed in the market against the likes of Maruti/Hyundai who have their customer service at very high levels.

But selling PVs is a different ball game - you're in a free market with top notch foreign players, who know how to excel at scale and have customer service down to a pat, a playbook probably perfected by their international experience.

On the back-end side, making mass market PVs is a different ball game as customers have multiple choices, while the CV buyers are more functional focused and probably don't care about fit and finish, NVH, panel gaps etc. Where else will they do? Just next door to Ashok Leyland. Hence Tata probably never had an incentive to improve things.

Will the future be any different? I hope so for sure! Tata recently decided to demerge the PV business from the CV business and they will be listed separately. Hopefully the PV business will receive due attention from the dedicated leadership and the niggles and issues will be a thing of the past! I sincerely hope this works out as India needs its own home grown automakers!

[carjack3090]

Tata as Maruti +1

One of major policy shift of Tata in past decade is to ape Maruti Suzuki in their offering. Tata which was the original innovator with Indica, Indigo, Hexa, Original Safari decided to dial down and become what I essentially call as Maruti +1. A strategy that gave them positive results but comes with its own passivity. Let me explain how

List of Tata Products in past decade (since Tiago)

1. Tiago: Competitor to Swift, Verdict- inferior to Swift but selling decently
2. Tigor: Competitor to Dzire, Verdict- inferior and not selling well
3. Nexon: Competitor to Brezza, essentially Altroz Crossover. Verdict- Sells tremendously well and forced Maruti to launch Baleno Crossover the Fronx
4. Altroz: Competitor to Baleno, Verdict- Not able to ape Baleno in drive and handling despite being better looking
5. Harrier/Safari- No Maruti Competitors yet
6. Punch- Competitor to Ignis, Verdict- Punch is Tata's first all winner product, forced Maruti to consider introducing a like to like car, testing is still going on
7. Curvv- No Maruti Competitor yet but the product itself is new, some can say Fronx to be Curvv competitor as both are Coupe designed

As one can see 5/7 products from Tata are directly to compete with Maruti in its territory where Tata won only once and matched once. This got them the sales in form of

a) Safer cars
b) Better looking cars

However then ever agile Maruti caught up and launched the best looking car in the segment "The Fronx" and upgraded their safety levels slowly.

Let's take how did the other Indian car maker Mahindra fared in meantime

1. Bolero Neo/TUV 300- Competitor to Brezza but Body on Frame so not directly competing with each other. Verdict- decent hit
2. Marazzo- Competitor to Innova so no competition with Maruti. Verdict- Flop
3. XUV 300- Competitor to Brezza, had inferior sales for a while till 3XO launched. Although Brezza is the clear winner. Verdict- decent hit
4. Thar- No Competition in segment, infact Maruti launched their Jimny to compete with it and bombed
5. XUV 700- No competition in the segment except Safari, is a clear success
6. Scorpio N- No competition in the segment, benchmarked to a higher segment Fortuner, is a blockbuster
7. Roxx- No competition in the segment (5 door Jimny being smaller and quirkier), is a blockbuster

So we can see Mahindra only competed with Maruti twice, where Maruti itself came chasing for Thar and was beaten in the process.

Mahindra clearly left a pie share of market to Maruti and targeted the untapped territory more without competition, this gave them free hand in attracting customers, since customers didn't have other options to choose from. Result: Greater revenue and accessibility

Tata must in fact look for similar strategy for future if they want to grow.

[NaviSwift07]

Excellent Analysis.

I would like to express my views on what Tata Motors needs to concentrate. They should reveal the product line up atleast for next couple of years and stick to it.

Tiago/Tigor: Second generation is due for Tiago/Tigor. Also, they should invest more on ICE engine and definitely work on their NA engines to improve its low end power and refinement to compete with Maruti's K series engines. Ofcourse its getting replaced by Z series engine and it is still superior than Tata's NA engine.

Altroz: They messed up with too many variants. Atleast in facelift (in testing), they should keep the variants simple. Few variants with NA engine, top of the line variant with 1.2 Hyperion (No Revotron please) to compete with i20 N line, and ofcourse continue the diesel variant."Racer"moniker sounds too basic, they should opt something better.

Nexon: It is selling well and they are already working on second generation. I believe they will plonk 1.2 Hyperion engine in Nexon from second generation. But its still far from now.

Curvv: It didn't go as they expected as they messed up during launch. Hyperion DCA variants are still not available in most places even for test drive too. They should have taken few more time to get these issues resolved.

Harrier/Safari: Introduce petrol variant as soon as possible. Not sure when they will launch Harrier EV.

Sierra: Only hope as of now for Tata. I am waiting for petrol version.