A queue of state governments had formed to offer the Nano project. While Dharwad in Karnataka seemed to be winning, Gujarat bagged the Nano project. The new plant is expect to come at on 1100acres of land at Sanand in 2010. Tata will (re)spend Rs 2,000 Crore (Rs 20 billion) on the new plant. Located 45km from Ahmedabad, Sanand will be the new home of the project, making an estimated 250,000 cars per annum.
The movement of the plant will have a serious impact on the project in the short term. Had the plant been running at full capacity, Tata would have been making as much as 250,000 Nanos a year, scalable to 350,000 which would have been far better in the face of what is expected to be an unprecedented deluge of demand. With the Pune and Pantnagar plants only able to make a maximum of 5000 Nanos (our estimate), the queues for people who will book the Nano will be long and tortuous and for once, it will probably not be the manufacturer's fault.
Reports in the media already suggest that Tata will open bookings only for a month, and this window will close when one lakh bookings are done. State Bank of India is reportedly the sole booking agent and while the actual down payment is not known - Rs 70,000 is being estimated or rumoured - you have to pay Rs 500 to register your booking. No one has ever done this with a car, as far as we know.
Industry estimates suggest that had Tata had their new plant on stream, the actual number of potential bookings could be as much as six times that figure!
Comments
0 comment