Tata Engineering's mega gambit of the Rs 1,760 crore passenger car project ‘Indica’ has turned the corner. And how? The passenger car project which was seen as an albatross around the Rs 52,000 crore group's neck has sashayed into the black in grand style. Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata now basks in the glory of the project's success. Ratan Tata told the Hindustan Times: "The Indica is an Indian car, indigenously developed and designed, and the components were designed for the first time by our vendors. 

What we suffered from the early Indicas is that our vendors gave us components that both of us had to bear the blame for. There were reliability issues, inadequate testing in some cases, and variability in production. There were some design issues also." The V2 version changed all that. Tata added that what you see between the early cars and now, the variability has been diminished or eliminated, and the design issues have been resolved.

Tata's personal brainchild has turned Tata Engineering into India's third largest passenger car manufacturer and, more importantly, India's only indigenous car manufacturer. But Tata now has other fish to fry. He wants to create a people's car. Tata said, "On the people’s car, what we have really wanted to do is to take a target market, essentially the two-wheeler market, which the Indian family tends to use. You see 4 or 5 people precariously travelling on a scooter on slippery roads, in the monsoons, in bad weather and this is their only motor transport unless they can move to a four-wheel vehicle."

What has convinced him to create a subcompact which is cheaper than the Maruti 800? He reckons that Indians are now looking to upgrade. So, what is the strategy? Revealing his action plan for the first time, Tata said: "In a country where the greatest demand is at the low end, we would look, without producing a substandard car or without putting four wheels on a scooter, to develop a niche product, that has the safety and the weather containment of a car, positioned somewhere between a two-wheeler and a car, thereby addressing the need of people’s transport for a family. I think we can come pretty close to achieving that goal."

Tata Motors launched the people's car initiative last year to provide a low-cost vehicle for the middle class Indian. Tata said detailed plans for the vehicle would emerge in the near future, and these would envision the setting up of a network of low-cost, low-volume manufacturing facilities around India for component production and assembly. What then is driving Ratan Tata? Lately he has launched a people's hotel and a people's car project is under way. He feels that he is very much a nationalist.

Tata said: "I am very proud of being an Indian. I feel very warmly about trying to uplift the quality of life of the people of India. Yet, while we have tried to run our businesses in a way that is for the benefit of the country, all you have to do is to go into the rural areas of India and you ask yourself, are you really doing enough to make something happen there…can you bring drinking water to those areas, can you do something in providing more food or raising the level of nutrition … sometimes you get frustrated, because you feel you don’t have the wherewithal or the infrastructure yourself to do these things."