Tata Motors trains dealers' staff to handle private car owners

Automotive major Tata Motors Ltd is training the staff of its car dealers to properly handle owners of private cars as the segment's dynamics are different from commercial cars' owners/drivers, a senior company official said on Thursday.

"We are training personnel of our dealers in attending to the needs of private car owners or prospective buyers. A sizeable investment has gone into upgrading the infrastructure at the dealers' premises and service centres to handle our new models," Girish Wagh, senior vice president of programme planning and project management, told IANS.

He was here to launch the company's new hatchback model 'Tiago', targeted at the personal user segment.

Wagh agreed that a good number of Tata cars sold were in the taxi segment and the manner of handling the customers' needs in the segment was different compared with the personal user segment.

He said the launch of 'Zest' and 'Bolt' models brought the company into focus vis-a-vis the personal user segment. Prior to this, the sales of petrol cars by the company was nil.

Speaking about 'Tiago', he said the car is designed afresh and more models will be launched on the same platform.

He said the company would launch two new models every year.

However, Wagh declined to share targeted sales numbers for 'Tiago' though the mid-sized hatchback segment contributes nearly 40 percent of the total segment sales.

He said many first-time car buyers are now going for models priced around Rs.400,000.

The 'Tiago' petrol variants are priced from Rs.3.31 lakh to Rs.4.83 lakh while the diesel variants are priced in the range of Rs.4.06 lakh to Rs.5.64 lakh.

According to the company's design head Pratap Bose, 'Tiago' has been designed anew from scratch and barring the steering wheel and the rear view mirrors there is not much in common between the new car and the company's earlier models.

"Even the wheels are different. The petrol and diesel engines are new," Bose said.