Tata Motors bets big on online booking

Tata Motors, the country’s largest automobile company, is betting big on online bookings and making it convenient for customers to take deliveries at their door step.

In an interaction with DH, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicle Business Unit Head (Marketing) Vivek Srivatsa said, “We have been taking online booking for HEXA which is about 1-2% of total bookings. However, surprisingly, for Tigor, it is close to 20% coming from our online portal, which is a big difference.”

“We believe, because it is the younger generation customer from metros who are used to buying stuff from online. Our back-end team is extremely organised, we encourage more customers from India’s IT capital to make use of our online services. Customers can visit online and choose the city or district, make payment by card and then the query is routed through a dealer,” Srivatsa added.

Srivatsa was here in Bengaluru for the launch of compact sedan Tata Tigor, which is priced at Rs 4.85 lakh for the Revotron 1.2L (petrol) variant and Rs 5.77 lakh for the Revotorq 1.05L (diesel) variant (ex-showroom Bengaluru). The Tigor creates a segment of its own as it is not a typical three-box sedan with a boot added to the hatch.

The Tigor is based on its successful Tiago hatchback platform which was rolled out last April and has sold close to 55,000 units. “Tiago had received 83,000 bookings in 12 months. Tigor is manufactured in Sanand (Gujarat) along with the Tiago. We will be able to deliver volumes required by customers,” Srivatsa added.

The Sanand plant has in excess of two lakh production capacity. Today, between Tiago and Nano, the company is selling over 75,000 units per year. With Tigor, the company is confident of looking forward to sell more units.

For Tata Motors, Karnataka is one of the biggest markets for compact sedans and hatchbacks. “Our market share in Karnataka is 7% compared with an all-India market share of 5.1%. Relatively, we are in a stronger position in Karnataka. We have a good presence in tier II towns with 37 sales points,” he added.

Tata Motors’ next launch will be Nexon before Diwali, which is going to be a big entry into the compact SUV space.

“Currently, we cover 50% of the market in terms of segment footprint with Tiago, Hexa and Tigor. With Nexon, we will take it to 75%,” Srivatsa said.