Tata Motors which saw a decade-low market share in the 2013-14 fiscal is all set to make a huge comeback with the Bolt hatchback and the Zest compact sedan; the company’s all new products after a gap of five years. Not only is Tata Motors working on developing best-in-class products for the respective segments, but is also working on the marketing, sales and distribution of these products in a bid to regain the lost market share in the country. While the Bolt will be competing in the premium hatchback segment, it is the Zest that will be competing aggressively in the compact sedan segment and has an ace up its sleeve with the automated manual transmission (AMT) coupled with a diesel engine.
Tata Motors stated that the new F-Tronic AMT gearbox will be mated to the diesel engine and will be the most affordable automatic diesel available in the country. The success of the Celerio has been a major pointer for other manufacturers to follow suit and Tata will be the first manufacturer to mate the AMT unit with a diesel mill. Powering the Zest will be the same 1.3-litre Multijet unit producing 90 PS of power and 200 Nm of torque. With the diesel market at its strongest point today, the Zest AMT diesel will surely bring in a lot of buyers who otherwise would have looked at higher segments for a diesel automatic.
The next six months will see Tata Motors hiring 3000-3500 sales personnel who will have to go through psychometric and aptitude tests to come onboard and beef up the sales, marketing and service networks of the company. Tata will also flag off what will be the largest automobile road show in the country by fanning out 2400 towns in the next six months. The company has been aggressively putting efforts to make sure their business structure is in place, before both the products have been launched.
The Bolt and Zest will also see the new turbo-petrol Revotron engine that will reach out to petrol customers, a relatively new space for Tata Motors. The new engine will also get three driving modes namely sports, comfort and cruise for performance or fuel efficiency that can be chosen at the touch of a button. The automaker is also in the process of installing Revotron labs across 100 showrooms in the country to explain this technology.
Tata Motors is looking forward to present a well packaged product in the market that will catapult the sales to 24,000 units a month, from the current 13,000-14,000 units it sells. The company has also brought in F1 driver Narain Karthikeyan who has played an important role in the conception of the new models.
