The Indian auto sales have taken a hit ever since the hike in lending and fuel rates a couple of months ago. One of India’s biggest auto company’s, Tata Motors was also hit badly, with the company registering bad sales for the month of July. Tata is now looking at revamping their dealer outlets with plans of opening category specific product outlets for increasing the sales volume of their passenger vehicles.
Tata Motors presently has around 250 dealer outlets, and plan to open Nano specific 300 outlets and 100 outlets to showcase their utility vehicles by this fiscal year end. P. M. Telang, the company’s MD of India operations, was quoted as saying that they need to make a few corrections in some areas. They need to rejig and rethink their product portfolio. Apart from this, they are looking at different dealership routes as well.
The company’s VP of commercial passenger cars, R. Ramakrishnan, said that they are changing from having dealerships with a full range of their cars, to having dealerships that are product specific. They will have three different types of dealerships, utility vehicle specific, passenger car specific, and Nano specific, however some dealer outlets could remain full range outlets. Beginning this fiscal, they had around 250 dealerships that offered their entire range. By the fiscal end, they plan to have 300 dealer outlets that are Nano specific, and 100 dealer outlets that are utility vehicle specific.
According to reports, the dealerships catering specifically to passenger cars is expected to open this year as well, however, Ramakrishnan did not reveal the approx. numbers. He said during this fiscal year, they would be transforming some of their utility vehicle specific outlets to passenger car specific outlets, and some of their full range outlets to passenger car outlets. However, they have not finalised on the exact numbers.
The company’s overall sales of passenger vehicles decreased by 38.30% to 17,192 vehicles in July, in comparison to the 27,865 vehicles it sold in the corresponding period last year. The sales of their Nano small car also decreased by 64% to 3,260 vehicles sold last month. The company, however, registered an increase of 14.30% in sales of commercial vehicles to 40,798 vehicles in the Indian auto market last month.
Ramakrishnan further said that they are still in early stages of trying to understand this market. They are right now in a learning stage and keep trying different strategies of marketing, such as selling their car through outlets of Big Bazaar. So far, Tata Motors, has received a good response from these initiatives, and would continue taking other such steps.
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