Tata Motors – Towards joining top 3 global CV makers league

Tata Motors is well on its way towards entering the league of top three CV makers globally, one of its goals for FY19. The Indian CV market leader recorded sales of 5,11,931 vehicles in FY16, registering a growth of 1.5% over FY15. With the Indian auto industry growing by 8% in FY16, Tata Motors’ exports on a standalone basis during the year grew by 16.3% to 58,058 vehicles as compared to 49,936 vehicles in FY15.

In the domestic market, Tata Motors sold 3,26,755 commercial vehicles (CVs), a growth of 2.8% from FY15, driven by volume expansion across segments. While M&HCVs have been growing through the year, the LCV segment witnessed positive growth during the second half of the FY16, both in goods and passenger carrier segment.

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M&HCV trucks continued strong growth, registering a 30% rise over last year, and the company has been able to retain a strong market share of 56% in this category. It achieved a new feat in the last mile public transport portfolio by reaching a remarkable sales mark of three lakh Tata Magic, its most popular public transport vehicle. Tata Motors also celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Tata Ace (launched in 2005) as the ‘Decade of Trust’ throughout the country.

Power products

Tata Motors launched the new and future ready SIGNA range of world class medium and heavy commercial vehicles, designed for applications in haulage and construction. With smartly designed cabin space, improved ergonomics and NVH levels, best-in-class fuel efficiency and the Tata Fleetman telematics system, the Signa offers drivers and owners a superior driving experience unlike any other.

Complementing the world-class range of Prima trucks, ULTRA represents global standards in intermediate and light commercial vehicles. Stylish and futuristic, with smart utility features, Tata Ultra has been engineered to meet changing customer needs. The new Tata Ultra 1518 launched recently is a fabulous combination of world class performance parameters, with enhanced levels of durability, reliability, driver comfort, high load carrying capacity and safety, along with best life-cycle cost.

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The launch of the Tata ACE MEGA with its best-in-class combination of power, speed and fuel efficiency stands to redefine the benchmarks of the small commercial vehicle segment. The vehicle comes preloaded with enhanced looks, a strong cabin, rated payload of one tonne, and lowest cost of ownership, which makes it a valuable and an innovative cargo transport solution for both intra and intercity transportation.

Upping the ante on service

Tata Motors has consistently tried to offer its customers an enhanced service experience and its efforts have catapulted it to the 3rd spot in the JD Power India Customer Service Index Study 2015. One of the new, industry-leading service initiatives undertaken last year was a series of mega service camps which were organized at all Tata Motors dealerships and authorized service centres across 287 cities. The third phase of the free comprehensive vehicle health check-up camp was conducted at over 1,000 locations. Customers availed of discounts, special offers and attractive exchange offers.

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Continuing its endeavour to get closer to its customers, Tata Motors is expanding its network, both for passenger and commercial vehicles. As a part of its commitment to increase its network by three-fold in the next five years across the country, it has set up state-of-the-art dealerships in strategic locations such as Jogeshwari in Mumbai, Salem in Tamil Nadu and Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh. These strategically located dealerships provide customers with a complete ‘3S’ experience of sales, service and spare parts, fulfilling their requirements and enabling an enhanced purchase experience and quality after-sales support under one roof.

A year of milestones

Tata Motors celebrated the 10th anniversary of Tata Ace, India’s No.1 mini truck. When it was launched in 2005, Tata Ace pioneered the small commercial vehicle (SCV) category. In just a decade, the Ace family has crossed the 1.5 million sales mark and captured 85% market share. It is also the most successful SCV brand – one in every five commercial vehicles sold in India is from the Ace family.

Tata Motors achieved yet another feat in its last mile public transport portfolio. Its popular public transport vehicle, Tata Magic, crossed the three-lakh sales mark. What makes this achievement significant is that with Tata Magic, Tata Motors has been able to capture the market despite the stringent regulations that have to be met.

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With sustainability being one of Tata Motors’ key focus areas, a number of interesting and future-ready vehicles with different fuel options including the Magic Iris Ziva hydrogen fuel cell version, Magic Iris Electric, Starbus hybrid and Ultra electric were presented during the year.

In 2013, Tata Motors took a pioneering step forward by introducing Tata Fleetman – a telematics technology based service offering – in its commercial vehicles to offer fleet owners the convenience of tracking their vehicles in real time. Now fleet management services have been technologically strengthened and expanded through a partnership with Microlise, one of Europe’s leading telematics services companies.

Tata Motors is the first commercial vehicle OEM in India to have launched these next generation services.

Export thrust

The company exported 58,058 vehicles (FY15: 49,936 vehicles) comprising 54,052 units of CVs and 4,006 units of passenger vehicles during FY16.  Export of CVs grew by 16.5% in FY16 with 54,052 units exported compared to 46,416 in FY15. The traditional markets of SAARC remained stronger than last year growing by 26% with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal contributing to the growth.

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The company was able to grow market share in the key markets of Sri Lanka, Kenya, Nepal, Ghana, Congo and Senegal. In FY16, it successfully bagged and executed several prestigious orders including 450 units Xenon troop carriers for the Ministry of Defence Myanmar taking the total order count to 1,450 units, 87 units of Elanza school buses in Saudi Arabia, 50 units Prima 4,438 in Saudi Arabia, 44 units Ultra truck delivery to Pran RFL Bangladesh and more that 1,000 units Tata Saathi, an application on the ACE platform to Bangladesh.

Some of the key events in FY16 were the launch of Tata Prima in Kenya, Uganda and Bangladesh, Ultra Bus in Sri Lanka, Ultra trucks in Bangladesh, Elanza bus in the UAE and Ace Express and Ace Mega in Sri Lanka and Nepal. The company also opened assembly units with 3rd party vendors in Tunisia and Vietnam. In FY16, the company achieved a key milestone of 1,000 Prima retails in export markets.

Future action plan

Tata Motors will continue its endeavour in R&D space to develop technologies, skill sets and competence which will help the company meet future product portfolio requirements.  One of the main future initiatives in this direction would be platform approach creating bill of material and bill of process which has high degree of commonality to reduce complexity and enhance the scale. Also, the company will aim at timely and successful conclusion of the technology projects so that they start getting inducted in the mainstream products leading to a promising future product portfolio.

The new markets in ASEAN are the company’s focus region for future growth – Indonesia, Australia, Philippines and Malaysia have been opened recently and the volumes are slowly and steadily picking up as the Tata Motors brand is becoming more visible in the market. Vehicle assembly in Vietnam was started in FY16 and retails will commence from beginning of FY17 onwards.

In addition, the company has been expanding its presence with the introduction of new products such as Tata Prima, Ultra trucks and buses in some of the key markets to further grow volumes. The company commenced exports of passenger vehicles to Bolivia in FY16 towards expanding footprint across Latin America.

Tata Motors bags orders for over 5,000 buses from STUs

 Tata Motors, the country’s largest commercial vehicles manufacturer, has announced having received orders of over 5,000 buses from 25 State and city transport undertakings across the country. This represents a healthy growth of over 80 per cent compared to last year in the order book position for Tata Motors.

The big surge in STU buying is being witnessed after a gap of nearly four years, indicating renewed focus of various State Governments and city transport providers on public transport.

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Mr. Ravi Pisharody, Executive Director, CVBU, Tata Motors Ltd.

The orders from both STUs and city transport providers represents a noticeable shift towards adopting new technology, safety, comfort features and connected IT-enabled buses. Tata Motors will also support the STUs to make certain the technology benefits are rapidly realized.

To better commuter safety and connectivity, some of the orders require a fully IT-enabled bus, to ensure trackability and traceability, with GPS-enabled on-board intelligent transport system (ITS), public information systems, via electronic destination boards, CCTV cameras, on-board WiFi, Smart multi-mode ticketing and on-board diagnostics systems.

To ensure better passenger comfort & safety, some of these buses are built with features like air-suspension systems, lower noise, vibration, harshness (NVH) system, automatic transmission set-ups, wider passage-ways for free movement, wider window panes for better visibility and wider and lower entry/exit doors.

Over 1,500 of the ordered buses will be fully built and integrated with these features at the Tata Motors JV manufacturing facility at Tata Marcopolo (Dharwad & Lucknow) and at ACGL, Goa.

Mr. Ravi Pisharody, Executive Director, Commercial Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors Ltd., said: “With these orders, we at Tata Motors take great pride in partnering with various STUs in delivering world-class solutions and to create and maintain a sustainable mass public transportation system. We are encouraged by the adoption of latest technologies by these STUs for fleet modernization, lower total operating costs and expanding user base & ridership. We welcome the collaborative approach employed by these STUs in bettering end-user needs, which will further help boost our efforts towards innovations in the public transport space.”

He added: “Tata Motors plans to execute all these orders in the financial year 2016-17. The orders will definitely enable us to further strengthen our leadership position in the CV passenger space.

Mr. Sandeep Kumar, Business Head (Commercial Vehicles – Passenger), Tata Motors Ltd., said: “Early investments in passenger transportation capabilities and technologies enable us at Tata Motors to play a leading role in providing fully integrated transport solutions in one of the world’s largest bus markets. With an extensive portfolio, we are geared up to provide a ‘win-win’ for both the operators and commuters of today and tomorrow. Having said that, we have nearly doubled our order book in FY16-17 already and are adequately prepared to cater to the current and future demand coming in for our buses.”

Tata Motors has also developed electric hybrid and articulated buses to meet the future transport needs for ‘Envisaged Smart Cities’, both of which will soon be seen on Indian roads.