Tata Motors Summary

Tata Motors is India's leading automobile company with market share of 24,3% in fiscal year finishing 31st March 2011. It is a part of Tata Group - one of the largest conglomerates in India, with businesses in communications and information technology, engineering, materials, services, energy, consumer products and chemicals. Tata Motors was established in 1945 as TELCO (Tata Engineering and Locomotive Co. Ltd) with the aim of manufacturing locomotives and other engineering products. The first commercial vehicle was built in 1954 as a result of a collaboration agreement with Daimler Benz AG, West Germany. This partnership has led Tata Motors to not only become India's largest automobile company but also India's largest commercial vehicle manufacturer, the world's fourth largest truck manufacturer and the world's third largest heavy bus and coach manufacturer.

For decades Tata Motors has specialized in manufacturing trucks (medium and heavy commercial vehicles - MHCV and light commercial vehicles - LCV). But the decision has been made to expand the product range to passenger car segment mainly to diversify the operations and de-risk the cyclical nature of its commercial truck business. In 1991 Tata Motors launch its first indigenously developed passenger car - Tata Sierra. Although it was a sport utility vehicle (SUV) it was accepted as a personal car in India. Further, in 1998 Tata introduced the first passenger car ever to be designed and produced fully by and Indian company: Tata Indica. Nowadays Tata Motors is present in all car segments passenger cars, commercial vehicles, bus and coaches. Tata production structure for 2010 is presented in Figure 1.