Elevator Pitch:
This case talks about how Tata Motors, India's largest automobile company, developed the Nano, the world's cheapest car. The case focuses on the translation of Ratan Tata's (chairman of Tata Motors) vision of a safe affordable car for the masses by Ravi Kant, managing director of Tata Motors into the Nano Project. The case raises questions around breaking the price-quality barrier and changing existing internal processes to accommodate revolutionary new ideas. The dilemma of success—Tata Nano was a runaway bestseller—left Tata Motors debating how large a bet they should make on the Nano and what kind of capacity commitment this requires. Never before in the history had, a new product in the automobile industry created such a huge buzz after Ford's famous Model ‘T’. Ever since Ratan Tata announced that he would make a ‘People’s car’ for a price less than $ 2,500, in 2003 Geneva Auto show, it mystified various groups of people about the possibility of price, power, quality, performance and other factors. However, Ratan Tata was never to be bogged down with by apprehensions and or naysayers. During 2008, Nano was all over the press for the wrong reasons and that probably would have been a blessing in disguise for Nano’s buzz and all the critics were are silenced for ever when the car was launched on March 23rd 2009 with various public and private sector banks offering loans to customers. Nano and Ratan Tata became almost synonymous providing India Inc. in general and Tata Group in particular a global corporate canvass. It definitely was the most awaited car in the world in the last several decades. Timing was just perfect to suit the recessionary pressures. This reduced the need for advertising and provided an unpaid coverage, worth about INR 100 crore, during on the launch day worth about INR 100 crore. It is perhaps the first time in the history that