The Jaguar marque sells worldwide for the equivalent of anything between Rs 50 lakh and above and could cost up to Rs 1 crore when imported to India and would drive its new owner into the select club of luxury car makers like BMW and Audi.
Unique distinction
Two months ago, Tata Motors earned the distinction of becoming the world’s cheapest car maker when it unveiled Nano — an affordable family car that will begin selling for Rs 1 lakh or nearly US$2,500 (ex-showroom) later this year. Although acquisition of Jaguar-Land Rover is much smaller than Corus in terms of deal size, it would firmly etch the Tata brand in the global corporate map.
Tata Motors is India’s largest vehicle maker, with a product range covering commercial, passenger and utility vehicles, and is the second largest player in the Indian passenger car market. But this is not the first time that Tatas are snapping up a British brand. In January 2007, Tata Steel acquired Anglo-Dutch steel maker Corus, a company that earned four times more revenue than the Indian buyer. Although Tatas showed class all the way, they have had to contend with insults be it when they bid for Jaguar-Land Rover or hotel chain Orient-Express. “I don’t believe the US public is ready for ownership out of India for a luxury-car brand such as Jaguar...,” Ken Gorin, head of Jaguar’s American dealers, had said during the course of Tata’s bid for Ford’s British marques.
However, Tatas have shown the world that they are not the ones to be cowed down by such paradoxical statements by people in the West, whose companies have increasingly been moving jobs to the East to save costs.
Defining moment
It is not in the Group to back off from what they set out to do, if Mr Ratan Tata’s statement is anything to go by. “I am unfortunately a person, who has often said you put a gun to my head and pull the trigger or take the gun away, I won’t move my head,” Mr Ratan Tata had said in an interview before the acquisition of Corus through a fiercely contested auction with Brazil’s CSN.
The acquisition of Corus was a defining moment for Tatas, as the Anglo-Dutch steel maker contained remnants of erstwhile British Steel — a company that had tried to thwart Tatas’ attempt at making steel a century ago.
The last few years have seen Tatas emerging as India’s biggest buyer of global entities, adding one company after another to the kitty of the group, which otherwise is also on a major expansion drive with planned investments of over Rs 180,000 crore in the next 5-7 years.