Tatas' drive into Sanand area for their Nano project has given a major fillip to Mumbai-based real estate major K Raheja Corp to set up its support infrastructure projects in the area.
"We probably could have sold another 20-30 per cent if there was an easy availability of vehicle finance. People continue to be interested in buying cars, but the sheer lack of finance is a concern.The buyer has to decide what his money can get him. I don't feel threatened that a customer of Chevrolet is going to buy the Nano instead," says Karl Slym, president and MD, General Motors India.
Majority of the revenue for the Indian IT industry continues to come from low value addition jobs like manpower provisioning and low-end support services, Modi said in Bangalore at the ICT event Bangalore IT.biz. Modi stressed that the IT industry has to reinvent itself, must focus on innovations, and on systems rather than being comfortable with services.
Farmers say they are paid lesser by Rs 110 per sq meter for road project. A day before the announcement of Nano project at Northcote farm in Chharodi village in Gujarat, the Ahmedabad district collector along with revenue department officials had assured the farmers that they would be duly compensated for the amount of land they given for four lane road project.
In March this year, the anticipation of Nano launch coupled with a sluggish demand had made a sharp dent in used car prices by 25-30 per cent. Dealers had feared a further dip in prices by around 10 per cent.
"Tata Motors officials have conveyed to us that they are thinking of setting up a small permanent production unit of Nano in Pantnagar," Chief Secretary I K Pande said. The Tata Motors spokesperson said, "It is Tata Motors's view that, even after the mother plant at Sanand becomes operational, Tata Motors will continue to manufacture a certain volume of the Nano at Pantnagar. We do not have any other information to share."
The farmers of Khoda and Bol village on Tuesday claimed that a large portion of the proposed 1100 acre for Nano is their ancestral property and the land was given for the cattle farm which falls under Anand Agriculture University. The state government has given half of the 2200 acres of land to the Tatas.
Before Tatas decided to set up the small car plant in Gujarat there were reports that the corporate group may opt for Pantnagar in Uttrakhand -- where Tata Ace pick-up trucks are being manufactured -- to produce Nano. For the inflow of industries into the state, Khanduri credited the 10-year special package announced by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2003.
The land acquisition row seems to chasing the Tata's Nano car project even out of Singur as farmers of villages near Sanand, the project's new address, have staked claim on the plot.
Within days of exiting from West Bengal, Tatas have decided to relocate their Rs 1 lakh-Nano car project in Gujarat, after scouting many sites including that Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
The company had started test runs for engines at its Pune facility in September after it work was stopped indefinitely at its Singur plant from August 29, leading to the abandoning of the Singur project site on October 3.
With hundreds of new industries setting shop at Pantnagar, just a stone's throw away, the economic impact is quite discernible in Rudrapur, the district headquarters of Uttarakhand's Udham Singh Nagar district. And now that Tata Motors is said to be gearing up to launch the first Nano from Pantnagar, there is fresh excitement in the area. The business community here is ready to give a red carpet welcome to Nano.
Sources in the West Bengal government's finance department said the state had made budgetary provisions that would run into several hundred crores every year for 20 to 30 years to attract Tata Motors' Nano project to Singur.
''The meeting between the state government and the Tata Motors officials will be held on September 28,'' Chief Secretary Amit Kiran Deb told reporters at the state secretariat. The meeting will take place amidst speculation that Tata Motors is preparing to pull out from Singur due to continued agitation by Trinamool Congress-led opposition demanding return of 400 acres of land to 'unwilling' farmers.
A team at California University has created a way to make square, nanoscale, chemical patterns that may be used in the manufacture of integrated circuit chips 'as early as 2011' -- it is called block co-polymer lithography. They have also built a process for creating features on silicon wafers between five and 20 nanometres thick.
Alan Rosling, executive director, Tata Sons Limited, said on Monday in New York that it will be a sad day for the Tatas if the project to manufacture Nano, the company's Rs 1-lakh small car that has generated worldwide interest, cannot succeed in Singur, West Bengal.
Tata Motors, which suspended work at the Nano plant in West Bengal's Singur in view of continued confrontation at the site early this month, has held talks with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi over relocating the facility to the state.
Karnataka chief minister told reporters that Karnatala would be glad to have the Tatas in the state following a meeting with Tata Motors Managing Director G Ravikanth in Bangalore on Thursday. Tata Motors has a manufacturing facility at Dharwad in the north Karnataka region, where it produces buses and tractors.
If Tata pulls out now, it will be a huge blow to the state, and will be expensive for Tata too, as the company has irretrievable sunk cost in Singur of between Rs 350 crore (Rs 3.5 billion) and Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion). Among the will be Mamata Banerjee, who will find it hard to live down the ignominy of having deprived her state of a project that has made news the world over.
India's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki on Thursday said it has no plans to cut the price of Maruti 800 to compete with Tata Motors' Nano.
The industry minister said the small car project could not come up if 400 acre was returned as demanded by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. Nirupam Sen, who had discussed the Singur project with Tata in Kolkata on Thursday night, said that the state government wanted to work out a solution and was was open for talks to find out an acceptable solution.
Terming Tata Motors Nano project as "very important for Bengal and industrialisation", CPI-M Politburo member Sitaram Yechuri was on Thursday hopeful that talks between the West Bengal government and Trinamool Congress on the issue would lead to a solution.
The price movement and trading volumes for few days prior to Mistry's ouster will also be looked into
Just months ahead of the launch of its Rs 1-lakh Nano, the world's cheapest car, automaker Tata Motors has started the process of expanding the dealership network for passenger cars.While the applications have already been invited for dealerships in Delhi and adjoining Ghaziabad, the company officials said that similar exercise is also being carried out in other parts of the country, wherever there is a need for expansion.
It was late last year when Tata Motors announced that it would set up the first plant for producing the Rs 1-lakh car at Gujarat's Sanand rather than Karnataka's Dharwad, among other places.
Here's a recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.
Most of the portion of the Nano car shed has been razed to the ground. Only a small structure is left which will also be demolished in next few days
Realty major Parsvnath Developers on Wednesday joined hands with Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, to develop a 11,138 acres knowledge city near Chandigarh, where the company will initially invest Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion).
Noting that the company's Nano plant in Singur, West Bengal, was expected to come into operation in the last quarter of 2008, Ratan Tata, in a letter to shareholders in the annual report for 2007-08, said that manufacturing facilities would be expanded to meet domestic and global demand in the future. "New variants of the Nano are also currently under development to meet the new environmental and fuel price challenges".
Banks make criteria tougher for funding the car. Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata's dream to help the common man own a four-wheeler may meet its bete noire in bankers as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and rival lenders realign rules to finance the Nano, touted to be the world's cheapest car.
The Nano Science & Technology Consortium (NSTC) announces admissions to its Nanotechnology Sensitization Program.
The demand from second-time car buyers outstrips the demand from those seeking to upgrade themselves from two-wheelers. Tata Motors' city dealers say about 60 per cent of all Nano buyers are those who already own a car and the rest 40 per cent are those who either own a two-wheeler or have never owned a vehicle earlier.
Maruti Suzuki India, the country's largest carmaker, may after all do what everyone expects it to: take on Ratan Tata's Nano with its own low-price car. For long, there has been a will-they-won't-they kind of speculation about how Maruti will protect its entry-level consumer base from the Nano, whose lowest variant is likely to cost Rs 1 lakh in some places and about Rs 1.26 lakh in some others. The higher variants may cost Rs 1.5 lakh or more.
Sabeer Bhatia, founder of hotmail, may give some concrete shape to his proposed Nano City project, to be set up near Panchkula in Haryana, on June 9, when he visits India to finalise equity structure with real-estate player Parsvnath Developers.
Joining the list of nations that are keen to have the Nano ply on their roads, Cuba today said the world's cheapest car from the house of Tatas has huge potential in the Caribbean nation.
Tata Motors has decided to stick to the Rs 1-lakh price tag -- plus value-added tax (VAT) plus transport charges -- for the car as the company believes hiking the price at this stage will be a 'breach of promise to the customers.'
Now Delhi-based Sona Koyo, which is supplying steering systems for the Nano, and Minda Group, which supplies electrical switches, have confirmed that they and other component suppliers have suggested a price rise to Tata Motors.
The announcement comes close on the heels of the US publication Conde Nast Portfolio's report that 'Nano' would not be sold in the US. "The model (Nano) won't be sold in the US but has the potential to radically alter the market for manufacturers in India. Tata-inspired followers are already revving up their engines," Conde Nast Portfolio said.
Tata Motors has set up a separate team at its plant in Pune to examine ways to cut manufacturing costs on the Nano, the small car scheduled for an October launch, to bring the ex-showroom price down to the psychological Rs 1 lakh mark, managing director Ravi Kant said.
The Rs 1-lakh wonder Nano will soon enter the elite league thanks to auto design firm DC, which on Wednesday said it will unveil redesigned version of the world's cheapest car within the next two months with premium price tag of Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million).
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