Karl Slym says he cant afford to wait

Slym joined Tata Motors a few days before his official date of joining, which was Oct 1

Karl Slym, the former head of General Motors India who took on the job of steering Tata Motors to the head of the table, said today that Tata Motors can do much better than it has done so far to battle it out in the fiercely competitive domestic car market.

Slym joined the country’s largest automaker a few days before his official date of joining which was October 1.

Appearing before the media for the first time after becoming the managing director, Tata Motors Slym said, “I can’t afford to wait. It’s important that we move in back from certain areas but we have said in the beginning there are short medium and long term things to be done yet. The development pipeline is already there, we are starting fresh from today.”  

Slym was speaking to reporters at the launch of the Club class Manza launched today in the city. The car is priced at Rs 5.7 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi) for the petrol variant and Rs 6.49 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi) for the diesel variant.Tata Motors has decided to continue with the Indigo template with its other car which is the Indigo CS but not the Manza.

“Its really about harnessing our capabilities, however, the foundations and the capabilities, can be much better than what we have seen as a result” Slym added.

Slym agreed that Tata Motors cars are looked at with a certain bit of perception in the domestic market, which would be a challenge to change.

“I think what we are aiming at with the Club Class for example is that the vehicles, the perception of the consumer of the vehicle is lagging behind. The quality of our vehicles, the durability has ,moved well beyond what the consumer is thinking about from the years gone by. So I see one of our short term challenges is been to make sure we are able to get those consumers in to our products so that they can feel touch and see that perception is long gone”, Slym added.
 
Besides being the third largest passenger car maker in India Tata Motors also the biggest commercial vehicle maker in the country. The company makes the budget car Nano to sports utility vehicle Safari under its own brand.