Fixes and Frugal Benefits - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 14

from 1991 to the end of 2012. He encouraged revolutionary ideas for the Nano that were
eventually abandoned, such as having a plastic body and no doors, and assembling the car
at small franchised workshops around the country.
Eventually, the car, though stylish, did not break significant new ground. It made manu-
facturing savings by being very small - 10ft long and just over 5ft wide - and by cutting a
four-cylinder engine from an earlier Tata car, the Indica, in half. It has three nuts instead of
four on tiny wheels, and one large windscreen wiper instead of two. The tail-gate does not
open, so access to luggage and the radiator is from behind the rear seats, as is the all-alu-
minium rear engine that can only be accessed by unscrewing six butterfly nuts and lifting
off the cover. 16 These economies made frugal engineering an end in itself, 17 whereas many
engineers would argue that it should be used to develop new ideas at a low cost. (Tata Mo-
tors now has more interesting plans for car bodies made of composite materials 18

along

with other innovations, but that is for the future.)
Sadly, the Nano turned out to be a misguided concept and the launch, which was staged
as a mega media event, was preceded for several years by a grossly overdone worldwide
public relations blitz. There was even a pop-star-style unveiling of the 'Peoples' Car' at
Delhi's biennial auto show in January 2008. 19 The extent of the unreal hype was illustrated
by a blog on the Financial Times website written by Suhel Seth, a Delhi-based television
pundit who runs a brand marketing company and has been an adviser to some Tata com-
panies. He wrote excitedly about 'the launch of a million possibilities' under the headline
'Why India Needs a Nano'. He wrongly, as later events showed, described it as 'a vehicle
for Indian aspirations' and one that was 'a car for the people'. 20 He claimed that it would
be seen 'with awe and pride', and had 'many firsts' to its credit. 'From a marketing per-
spective, it has already gone into the lexicon of India's people and the fact that Tata called
it a people's car is even more suggestive of the transfer of ownership of the brand from a
company to its users: the people,' wrote Seth. Rarely has the FT been so far removed from
reality. 21 I wrote a rejoinder to Seth's article on my 'Riding the Elephant' blog headlined
'Tata's “One-Lakh” Nano: Let's Cool the Hype' which appeared on FT.com alongside his
piece .
Cost increases meant that Tata could only sell a very basic no-frills version (without air
conditioning) at the 'one lakh car' (Rs 100,000) price that Ratan Tata originally promised,
so the slogan became a marketing drag. Aspirational Indian families, who Tata dreamed
of upgrading from unsafe overloaded scooters, did not want to own the world's cheapest
product. Many would not have had space to park it near their homes in cramped narrow
streets.
Production of the Nano was initially held up because of the move from West Bengal to
Gujarat. The launch had to be delayed and Ravi Kant and his team had the monumental
task of setting up a temporary production line at another Tata plant in five months. 'That