Tata sets high target for bus unit
Business Standard — March 11, 2005

Tata Motors, India's largest combined passenger car and truck manufacturer, has set itself an ambitious target of $1billion in sales by 2010 from its revamped coach and bus unit. Ratan Tata, the company's chairman, launched 19 buses and coaches yesterday in an attempt to capitalise on an expected increase in highways and other road infrastructure in India to keep pace with the country's economic development.

India's crowded metropolises are also expected to follow the global trend of assigning designated coach and bus lanes in city centres, particularly in the run up to the Commonwealth Games in India in 2010, to improve public transport. Tata said the group's new bus range had been designed internally with the manufacturing outsourced to affiliates or franchisees in India. Tata Motors had earlier manufactured bus and coach chassis and sold the steel frames to independent body builders.

As part of its bet on a big rise in demand, Tata Motors last month acquired a 21 per cent share in Hispano, a privately owned Spanish body builder, for Rs700 million ($ 16 million). Tata has an option to acquire 100 per cent of the mid-sized manufacturer, which has a 25 per cent share of the Spanish market and plants in Zargoza, Spain and Casablanca, Morocco. Ravi Kant, executive director of Tata Motors, said the company was looking for an unspecified "but substantial" share of the fragmented coach and bus market in India. The company hopes to export about a quarter of output to markets in south Asia and Africa.