Tata Motors to launch sub-brand ‘Tamo’

After losing significant market share over the years, Tata Motors is rebooting its passenger vehicle segment by taking a start-up and platforms approach.

To solve the first part of the puzzle, Tata Motors has created a new sub-brand called Tamo, a new vertical within Tata Motors which will work as a start-up, collaborating with technology companies across the world and bringing out sports luxury vehicles — a segment Tata Motors has no presence in so far.

The second piece involves building two vehicle platforms that’ll be used to build all Tata cars — which use a common underlying design and components for all vehicles — thereby reducing procurement costs and time-to-market.

The two platforms will the ready by 2018, the company said.

“Tamo is a laboratory for us, wherein we will develop ideas and proof of concepts. A lot of technologies are developing today. We will transfer some of those technologies to our mainstream business. A car is no more a piece of metal — it’s a digital home,” Mayank Pareek, President of PV Business at Tata Motors, told BusinessLine .

“To secure our future in a rapidly changing environment, the advanced mobility solutions space is of utmost importance,” said Guenter Butschek, MD & CEO, Tata Motors. “The introduction of Tamo will help us to co-design India’s automotive footprint by taking new technologies and mobility concepts as a new ecosystem to market.”

Tata Motors has already set up an office in Palo Alto, California. Tamo teams in the UK, US and India (Bengaluru) will collaborate with start-ups in each of the countries to build high-end futuristic cars. Pareek said the team size will not be more than 10 in each of the countries, focusing on faster development of newer models, which can be launched to test waters.

“With Tamo, we will launch cars with features that may or may not be ready for mass market. Based on the feedback from the launch, we will look at launching the same model with requisite changes for the mass market under the Tata Motors brand,” Pareekh said.

The first car to be launched under the Tamo brand will be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show on March 7 and will be available in the market in this calendar year itself.

The new cars developed under Tamo will also use several autonomous features such as drive assist and automatic parking, wherein the car parks itself when it is identifies a parking spot.

“Eventually, the world is moving towards autonomous cars. While autonomous cars may not work in India, some pieces of the car can become autonomous, such as automated parking. Parking is a huge issue in India. We can look at automating it,” Pareekh said. The two initiatives, along with the two new car launches (Tiago and Hexa) are expected to help reinvigorate the energy that had been lagging in Tata Motors for the past decade.

The company acknowledged that it has been slow to launch new models and is all set to change that with the new strategy.

From 2009 to 2014, Tata Motors didn’t have a single new product launch while other auto companies launched 48 models in the personal vehicles segment in the same period. Due to this, the company’s market share declined to 13.1 per cent from 25.2 per cent in 2012.

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