Tata Motors passenger vehicle business has been on a roll, despite a slight blip in the last 6 months when it didn’t have any new launches, but with the introduction of the refreshed popular models such as the Safari and Harrier SUV, the company is expecting an accelerated growth.
PB Balaji, CFO, Tata Motors, states that the company saw “Strong growth in October and with the updated Safari and Harrier being launched, we see momentum to pick up as demand. We want to keep wholesales to be lean and mean the dealer inventory needs to be at comfortable level. We want retails to be better than wholesale and see Q4 to be much stronger.”
In fact, the company continues to focus on profitability and play to its strength. Electric vehicles are a strong play for the company as it has around 77% market share in the passenger vehicle segment.
“Our objective is to focus on brand, customers and strong product offerings. We want to have competitive profitable growth. In areas like EVs we cannot accept any conversation (on slowdown), as we are the market and our intention is to grow the market. We have no intention of worrying on that.”
Compared to some OEMs in the market, who are rolling out and introducing hybrids, Tata Motors has no plans to enter that segment. In fact, it continues to bet on CNG vehicles which contribute 14% of sales, and EVs which see 13% penetration for the company’s PV mix.
He agrees that the CNG variant of Tiago and Tigor could have done better, but nonetheless, the Punch CNG variant and other products continue to get good response from the market.
When queried about plans to enter the mass-market entry-level four-wheeler segment, Balaji stated that Tata Motors has no plans to launch any product below the Tiago.
