Reviving Tata Nano

Tata Motors plans to unveil its new avatar, GenX Nano and the positioning has been changed from “cheapest car” to now becoming an aspirational vehicle. And it will include a lot of new features  and wants to now address the emotional level through brand building and at the product level by making it a complete hatch. This puts to mind the rumours doing the rounds that the company plans to kill the brand and the car all together.

Tata Nano had elicited so much patriotic fervor; after all it was the cheapest small car to be made anywhere around the world. In fact the whole world was waiting for it as eagerly as we Indians. But ironically, in this country of so many poor, the strategy to market the car as “cheap” backfired. It was projected as a “poor man’s car” and that was its biggest undoing. We may be poor and half the population might live in shanties, yet very few want to be associated with a car which is exactly for those on the lower rung of the economic ladder. 

Does that mean that we as Indians are so status conscious today that we pay no heed to economic sense? Has consumerism seeped in so deep? Today, a car depicts an image and is no longer a means to get from one place to the other?

Surely perception alone cannot be the sole reason. Many say that Nano flopped because no one wants to buy the same car which your postman or dhobi is buying. But if that is so then how we come we do not mind if it’s the same mobile or the same TV? Yes, there does exist a subtle class divide but is it so deep rooted? Indians are known world over as one of the biggest savers and when we are so conscious about every penny we spend, would we allow mere status to decide to what we buy or use? Maybe for some but not for all.

The Nano is a car which we Indians should be proud about. It is the first indigenous car of India and it alone put India on the world map, with many even addressing India as the new “Detroit”. The launch of Nano forced some of the biggest names in the world auto sector to explore options of developing their own small and cheap cars.

It is good that the company has now reworked  its marketing and distribution strategy for Nano. That, plus with interest rates expected to come down, the same people saying “Na” and “No” to the Nano could have a change of mind.