Marketing
Tata Small Car Project- My Comments in BW
This is the comment I have made at Businessworld website. You can read this article" Small Car, Big Dreams" in Business World Magazine : Volume 27 Issue 11. For the week 30 July-31August 2007 http://www.businessworld.in/content/view/2199/2297 This small car is more than a big dream for Ratan Tata and it presents new dimension for the Ratan Tata's flagship company TATA Motors. Ratan Tata being a business visionary understands the importance of small car projects not only in terms of the revenues it brings to Tata Motors, but its influence in term of organizational culture, Branding, Supplier relationship and Marketing systems. The new car project presents non- traditional barriers to an automotive company and challenges the members of organization to think innovative, something which is difficult in large organization of Tata Motors size. This prepares the organization to be flexible and break the existing rules. In all it drives enthusiasm starting from skepticism to belief, belief to succeed in delivering something different. Historically, small cars or people cars as they called has high brand recognition, belong to masses and are loved/hated, most important they are talked about. They touch your sentiments, I am not sure If Tata's small car will be successful or not but certainly is much talked about. This small car project also helps to identify the Tata Motors suppliers which are proactive, ability to take risk and have ability to run with Tata Motors in new projects. The new car project not only challenges the organization from design and manufacturing perspective, it let Tata motors to remove the barriers in the mind in terms of materials, technology and systems. All these will be a good learning points for the organization and can get implemented in many ways in other programs as well. It bring lots of direct and indirect productivity benefits to the organization. The small car project as I understand will be distributed in Knock down kits and assembled by partners. This approach of community building is a major step and can establish Tata Motors as it did for SAP long back in software systems for ERP. New dimensions will evolve in services and it will be a major boost for spare parts business. Success or failure of small car project tata motors will always be beneficiary, however same may not be true for already polluted environment and congested roads.
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