The festive season is about to get underway in the Indian car market and most of the companies are looking to maximise their sales and profits by launching new models or offering schemes. Tata Motors, it seems, is doing fantastic business by doing the former and according to a report by Motorbeam, the Indian manufacturer has been able to register around 10000 bookings for new model Zest, which is a compact sedan. The Indian market has been doing pretty well in the past half a year and 2014, till now, has been good.
According to reports, Tata Motors’ aggressive pricing strategy for this car might help it to regain some lost ground in the market and the firm has already delivered 2000 units of Zest. By doing this, Tata has joined an elite group of models that have received equally amazing responses when they were launched, such as Hyundai Grand i10, Hyundai Xcent, Ford EcoSport, Honda City Diesel, Honda Mobilio and Mahindra XUV500.
Tata Motors’ fortunes in the car market have been rather on the negative side of the graph in the past few years with its undying attempts at reviving the Nano not materialising into sales. However, experts feel that by launching a new product in the market, Tata has done the more sensible thing and it will do a lot of good to the firm. Tata Zest, the new model, has been designed keeping in mind the requirements of the modern day consumer with respect to technology and features.
This compact sedan has numerous features, some of them being so lofty that car twice the price would also not possess them. Tata Motors has gone the whole nine yards with this car by making it the most affordable diesel model in India with an automatic variant, something that will earn it a lot of praise. Coming from an Indian manufacturer, Tata Zest diesel automatic variant has won hearts of customers all around the country and they are booking this model over the manual version.
Experts feel that this model could actually start the trend of automatic cars becoming popular in the country. At the moment, sources claim that Tata Motors has been overwhelmed by the bookings received for Zest and now the bookings extend to up to four months.
The automated manual transmission, sourced from Magneti Marelli, has a pretty high demand and at present the supply is not up to scratch. Customers, with each passing day, have been enquiring more about this version, thereby increasing its waiting period. Not only is the automatic version, the demand for the other two versions high as well.
Industry experts have appreciated how Tata Motors has been able to package the Zest compact sedan and to top it all, the aggressive pricing has brought down the competitors as well. Tata Zest is powered by a 1.2-litre petrol engine that churns out 89 BHP of power while the diesel version, fitted with a 1.3-litre Quadrajet engine, delivers an output of around 74 BHP. The starting price of this model is INR 4.64 (base petrol model) and ends at INR 6.99 lakh (top diesel model). Analysts believe that this model could help Tata Motors get back on track in the market and could lay an excellent platform for the Bolt hatchback, which be launched in sometime.
Source: MB
