Tata's 1 Lakh small car 'Nano'

Tata's small car: Small size big opportunity

In Pics: Tata Nano

Preeti Burde, who owns a chain of driver training schools in Maharashtra’s Thane city, plans to buy Tata’s Nano the moment it is launched later this year. She is not exactly from the price-sensitive middle class family that the world’s cheapest car is targeted at. She is a businesswoman trying to profit from it. Ms Burde believes a large part of her future customers will be Nano buyers and she may have to migrate at least part of her fleet to the new car to help them learn on the car they’ll drive. “We definitely see a growth in the business as more and more people would come in wanting to learn how to drive in a Nano, which means we too would have to buy more of the Nano model,” she says.

As Ratan Tata pushed gears to ceremonially drive the Rs 1 lakh car at its unveiling in New Delhi, he was not just challenging the automobile industry with its radical economics, but also firing up new business dreams of scores of entrepreneurs across the country who expect the high volume sales of Nano to spawn opportunities to make money. While people like Ms Burde will leverage the high volume sales of Nano to power their businesses, Tatas themselves will be doing their bit for entrepreneurship. If Tatas’ plans succeed, Nano will not just be a car but a new business model and the central piece of ecosystem of entrepreneurship. The way Nano will be built and sold is going to be very different from the way others cars are brought to the showroom. Call it McDonaldisation of the car industry, but Tata wants the small guy to help him assemble and sell the car. This way, he hopes to create new business opportunities for young engineers across the nation, even while finding a cost-effective way to push Nano to the remotest corners of the market. “We would create entrepreneurs across the country over time that would produce the same car,” Tata group chairman told ET in an exclusive interview. “We would produce all the mass items and ship it to them as kits so it is similar to an SKD or CKD operation,” he said. He explained that the company will bring together business aspirants from around the nation to set up satellite assembling and dealership operations. These entrepreneurs need not have experience in the automobile industry.

“My aim was that, I would produce a certain volume of cars and then I would create a very low-cost, low-break-even plant that a young entrepreneur could buy and that bunch of young entrepreneurs could establish an assembly operation,” Mr Tata said. Tata Motors would retain the responsibility for quality assurance and train people who will oversee the operations of these entrepreneurs. The whole ecosystem will look up to the manufacturing strengths of Tata Motors, but will do final assembly at the local units. “It will be very satisfying if the small car created 10 or 15 satellite groups of young engineers who thought they could get together and do a business and never be able to get, normally, in the assembly of cars,” Mr Tata said.


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