Tata Motors plans complete new product portfolio by 2023-24: CEO

Tata Motors plans to completely overhaul its passenger vehicle portfolio over the next five years as part of its plans to grow sales volume and market share in the highly competitive Indian market, the company's top executive said today.
Speaking to PTI on the sidelines of Geneva Motor Show here, Tata Motors CEO and MD Guenter Butschek said the company's new products would be based on two architectures--OMEGA (Optimal Modular Efficient Global Advanced) and ALFA (Agile Light Advanced Architecture).
"In the five years time, roughly by 2023-24, we will most probably have complete new product portfolio," Butschek said after unveiling the E-Vision Sedan Concept.

The future products are going to be based on two new architectures, he added.
While the ALFA architecture is going to cover all vehicles from 3.7 metre to 4.3 meters the OMEGA architecture is going to accommodate all products from 4.3 meters and above region, Butschek said.
Elaborating on the product strategy, he added that the company would be 'certainly' very strongly represented in the 50 per cent of the PV market -- the sub compact segment.

"We will also develop new sub segments in order to make the play in the 50 per cent segment more attractive and giving the customer in this market segment more opportunities in terms of body styles in terms of features etc," Butschek said.

The company at the same point of time would also continue to have strong presence in the segments above 4.3 metre in order to make Tata Motors as a more aspirational brand, he added.
"We also want to play the game more aggressively in the SUV segment. We believe as the the market is further going to develop and there will be a shift from the sub compact to compact and from the compact to big sized vehicles," Butschek said.
The two new architectures will give commonality to the company's products, he added.
"While we leverage the initial investment in the architecture we can very effectively spread our base across lots of different sub segments. It means the play of Tata Motors is going to be larger while providing economies of scale because of two architectures," Butschek said.

The richer and wider product portfolio will give Tata Motors opportunity to grow its volumes, he added.
"As we grow in volume we have a clear ambition to also grow the market share as well," Butschek said.
He however did not elaborate on the market share target going ahead but said that as per the company's vision document it plans to be number three in the domestic PV segment by the end of next fiscal.
"This is the target for the end of next fiscal year. What is going to happen in the next five years, with two platforms, taking the lead in design and technology particularly in electrification, our future market position I would say we have good opportunity to be even more aspirational," Butschek added.

When asked about company's plans regarding sales network expansion, he said:"If we would like to grow, one of the pre-conditions is have a network which provides density in order to really reach our full customer potential across the nation."
The company also needs to upgrade its dealers in terms of appearance, location and even more importantly as far as the capabilities are concerned, he added.
"We have a strong belief that with product, sales and after sales experience is also important. In the past we had dropped focus on after sales but now we are putting a lot of focus on after sales service quality," Butschek said.