K. A. Ananthram and Mohini Bhatnagar

The Tata Indica story resembles the fable of the ugly duckling in some ways, with one crucial difference: the country’s first indigenously designed and manufactured passenger car never looked less than pretty. But, like the duckling of the fairy tale, it has emerged stronger and more beautiful than ever after overcoming global competition and a recessionary market.

The Indica’s teething troubles -- ramp-up constraints early on and a recessionary market thereafter -- are a thing of the past and the car sometimes identified with India itself has crossed the 100,000 mark in volume faster than the Maruti 800, the Zen, the Matiz and the Uno. (See www.goacom.com/goanow/2001/apr/autos.html for an independent testimonial.) 

Getting past the 100,000 mark in quick time is a fair return onTata Engineering’s investment in developing the car: Rs 1,700 crore, the largest ever made by the Tata Group in a single project. Huge as the amount seems, it is still the lowest ever cost incurred by an automobile company anywhere in the world for launching a new vehicle from design to production stage.

Scepticism from far and wide had greeted Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata’s announcement of the intent to produce an indigenous passenger car. Few believed that a commercial vehicles monolith like Tata Engineering could manufacture a customer-driven product like a passenger car. The shock to the sceptics was delivered when the product was unveiled at the Auto Expo in January 1998.

Constant improvements and, most importantly, the goal of creating customer satisfaction, has taken the Indica to new highs. Tata Engineering truly believes that the customer is king. So vital is this belief that customer satisfaction is factored into the job profiles and performance appraisals of all employees in the company’s marketing, sales and service departments.

Is hasn’t been an easy ride. As Rajiv Dube, Tata Engineering’s general manager for the passenger car unit, says, "The going has, indeed, been tough. For somebody with no history in cars to get it all right on day one is unrealistic.

"All of us knew we would have to go through the learning curve. Our effort has always been to shorten that curve and get ahead of the competition. We never lost sight of our goal, which was to provide the customer with a product that offers the best value for money."

Having dominated the country’s commercial vehicles market, where customer pressure is far less when compared with the passenger cars segment, the effort at delivering customer satisfaction had to be institutionalised across the organisation.

It began in mid-1998, when the existing range (Sierra, Estate, Sumo and Safari) was clubbed together under a new marketing division that preceded the launch of the Indica. The organisation went through an elaborate process to create the set up. Dynamic, relatively young people driven by the challenge of producing and marketing a new car were brought into the picture.

The Indica was launched in December 1998 with just 44 dealers. The dealers, too, were chosen keeping customer satisfaction paramount. The company ensured that the Indica dealer network had the right customer orientation and that adequate investments were made in technology and people of the appropriate standards.

And Tata Engineering has gone the whole hog while strengthening its dealership spread. From 44 dealers, when the car was launched, the network now has 85 dealers across the country and will have 110 by March 2002. To provide quality after-sales services at easily accessible points across the country, the company has raised the number of ‘Telco authorised service outlets’ from 56 to 240 over the same period, with plans to push it up to 350 by March 2002.

This makes Tata Indica’s after-sales service network the second largest in India after that of Maruti, the country’s largest passenger car manufacturer, and ahead of competitors like Hyundai and Daewoo.

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