Rise of Tata Motors

Tata Motors, formerly known as TELCO is sub-group of Tata which comes under top 100 most valuable brands across the globe. Tata group was founded by Jamsetji Tata in 1868 and consisted mainly of manufacturing steel until 1945 when Tata Motors was founded by J.R.D Tata. Tata Motors was mainly founded as locomotives manufacturer but today it produces passenger cars, construction equipment, buses, trucks and military vehicles. Today Tata Motors is among the largest Indian Automotive manufacturer and generates a revenue of around $44 billion as of 2019.

Ranking #226 on the world’s biggest corp. in Fortune Global 500 (2016), Tata Motors has its presence all over the globe with its manufacturing units located in India, Argentina, South Africa, Great Britain, and Thailand. Moreover, it’s R&D units work in India, South Korea, Great Britain, and Spain. It is the 2nd largest bus manufacturer in the world. Founded in 1945, Tata Motors launched its 1st locomotive vehicle in 1954 with Daimler-Benz AG. Although the partnership with Daimler-Benz ended in 1969; Tata managed to grow further and entered passenger vehicle market in 1988 by launching Tata Mobile, also known as Tata 207 Di, which turned out to be quite demanding at that time. Continued growing and Tata launched its 1st passenger car, Tata Indica, in the year 1998.

In the year 2004, Tata bought South Korean company Daewoo and later in 2008, bought English automobile company Jaguar Land Rover from Ford. The year 2008 was quite grueling for Tata. In the year 2006, Tata planned to launch the world’s cheapest passenger car by setting up a plant in Singur, West Bengal. The plan wasn’t a success because of 15000s of farmers owning the land. The Singur belt was most fertile as compared to the surrounding area and Tata was promising only 1000s of jobs after plant establishment. 1200 acres of land of Singur was taken over by the government under the Land Aquisition Act 1894, which included 997 acres of land where Tata was planning to set up the plant. The Act didn’t allow taking over the land for private business purposes and this created tension among the state. Opposition parties were against Tata and the ruling government. In October 2008, Tata canceled its plan to run the plant in Singur and moved to Sanand, Gujarat. Tata Nano came out to be a success later and continued its production. In 2017, Tata introduced its subsidiary TAMO for developing concept cars and vehicles. From developing the cheapest car in the world to developing Concept Cars, Tata is the only company to have such a broad portfolio.