Cheapest Four-Wheel Ride: Tata has high hopes for Nano

NEW DELHI: The head of India’s vehicle-to-steel conglomerate Tata Group says he still has high hopes for the Nano, billed as the world’s cheapest car, despite a slow sales start. Tata Chairman Ratan Tata has insisted the concept of the low-cost Nano, whose base model sells for 154,540 Indian rupees or $2,800, is solid. “The fundamental economies of the Nano... will establish itself in the Indian market with a wider sales and service network,” Tata said in the firm’s annual report released on Friday. During the last fiscal year, Nano sales rose 10.73% to 77,989 units from a year earlier. But the number is still a far cry from Tata’s hopes, voiced at the car’s unveiling in 2008, of eventually selling a million cars a year. To boost sales, Tata has given the car a makeover -- making it available in more colours, sprucing up its interior, offering fast-track loans and doubling the warranty to four years.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15^th, 2012.