Retailing

Nano to be sold across 2,000 Tata vehicle outlets:

Revving up sales: Ever since Nano sales fell to 509 units last month, Tata Motors has been pulling out all stops to revive customer confidence in the car.

In a first-of-its kind sales strategy in the automobile industry, Tata Motors plans to sell the Nano across India through at least 2,000 vehicle outlets.

Apart from its 540 passenger car dealerships and the newly created 110 exclusive Nano access points, the company plans to sell the car through 290 authorised service centres meant for Tata passenger cars. It is also exploring the option of using its over thousand Tata Authorised Service Centres for commercial vehicles to sell the Nano.

Nearly 1,000 outlets will retail the car in the next few months. Another 1,000 – the commercial vehicle service centres – may begin to sell it at a later stage.

In short, there will be three to four Nano sales points in every district in India.

Nationwide sales:

The company has started open sales of the car in 12 States and a spokesperson said this would be countrywide by March 2011. Once that happens, the number of special access points where the Nano is showcased will exceed 200.

The idea is to take the car within easy access of all customers. Sources say Tata Motors is using the price tag as the bait to entice two-wheeler buyers. The selling strategy is on the lines of bike manufacturers. While carmakers such as Maruti, Hyundai and Tatas have 500-600 sales outlets each, Hero Honda alone has 4,500 sales points. The Nano's vast network will now replicate the two-wheeler model.

Each of these outlets in interior India is intended to play a part in helping the company realise the full capacity of its Sanand plant at 2,50,000 cars annually.

The potential customers for the Nano are largely in these regions and this initiative will help reach access them better. In fact, Maruti, Hyundai and Mahindra have been reaching out to rural areas and small towns.

Ever since Nano sales fell to 509 units last month, Tata Motors has been pulling out all stops to revive customer confidence in the car. The first step was to offer added safety features for existing customers. This was followed up by extending the warranty to four years or 60,000 kilometres (from 18 months or 24,000 kilometres).