March 23:N-Day

When the month of February started information began doing the rounds that the launch of the Tata Nano would be delayed by at least a year. We’d be able to buy it only sometime next year. The top brass at the company including its Managing Director Ravi Kant remained non committal about the Nano, making statements to the effect that led us to believe that we’d see the world’s cheapest car only in 2010.

As we now realize this has been a very shrewd business move. An official statement from Tata Motors released a few hours ago has now confirmed that the wait for the Nano ends on March 23, 2009.It’s the day the car will be finally launched.

The announcement has taken everyone by surprise. None of the problems stated earlier have been fully solved therefore the going for the Nano is not going to be a smooth run.

The most immediate problem that the Nano faces is the credit situation. It’s a difficult time for consumers to get financing for the cars they want to buy .The priority for Tata Motors would be to arrange easy financing options for those who are interested in the Nano’s purchase.

For Tata Motors itself the launch of the car comes at a time when the world auto market is in a very difficult place.

The above being said we cannot fully say that the Nano’s launch a month from now is a bad thing. We’ll simply have to wait and watch if the car is worth the hype. In any case managing to engineer a car for the price of less than $2000 is an amazing achievement.

The fact that it’s an indigenous low cost solution to India’s auto market cannot be stressed enough. The car enters the market directly to compete with the high end two wheeler market which is a big deal because no four wheeled vehicle has ever managed to do this in the extremely competitive two wheeled market.

The Nano will go head to head with the second hand car market too. Considering the scope of the competition it brings, over time it could well turn out to be India’s big automobile game changer.

No wonder than that Ratan Tata has been sending his Nano along with his top officials to many religious holy places across the country.

No matter what the outcome for the Nano is in the long run, the short term gains for it are positive. Today saw the stock of Tata Motors rise by almost 8% on the announcement of the Nano launch. The share will indeed be hot pick in the near term.

However at the end of the day the car is a victory for one Ratan Tata who had put all his efforts in the making of this car. Ever since he announced last year that his team had developed a car that would cost around one lakh rupees ,things have gone wrong for him.

We hope all that changes come March 23.