The past five years have outgrown Tata Motors in the Indian automotive market with competitors providing capable products in every segment. The company lost ground on its home turf but is now working towards getting its position back in the market with launching two new products every year in the passenger vehicle segment starting this year itself. The company has been working to improve its products with the help of the acquired luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover.
JLR has been doing exceptionally well and is known for its products globally. Tata wants to use the learnings from JLR and induce the same into the future volume products that will be sold in the domestic market. The real challenge however comes to harmonising both in terms of business sense and economics considering the companies work at the different ends of the spectrum. Certainly JLR has the engineering and design prowess, but also knows about working with suppliers, manufacturing functions and advanced quality planning that can be incorporated in the day-to-day working at a Tata plant in India.
Both the firms have set up a cross-functional project management team for this purpose. Tata has also invested in an R&D centre in the UK that will be instrumental in designing the next generation of cars at Tata.
Tata Motors saw a decline in sales in the April – January period this fiscal with sales down by 42 percent; reason being there were no new products on offer. The company used its time more productively to introspect where it went wrong with its products and acknowledged they were lagging behind in the very plans drawn up by them. The result has been the HorizonNEXT program that showcases the product portfolio strategy until 2020 with plans to launch a total of 15 – 20 products by the end of this decade. The Tata Bolt hatchback and Zest sedan were the manufacturer’s two brand new products after a gap of five years, the first of the lot. The company will launch two new products every year.
Tata Motors is also working on launching the compact SUV Nexon in the next two year, that was showcased at the 2014 Auto Expo. Whereas Tata and JLR are said to be working on a joint product codenamed Q5 which will be a monocoque SUV based on the Freelander platform and will take on the XUV500. There are 1.5-litre and 2.0-litre engines that the firms will develop together in the future. The company is looking forward to rise in global markets and is working towards a successful product portfolio.
