Tata Motors sees note-ban effect on sales wearing off

The leadership at Tata Motors believe that the pent-up demand will begin to release now, after demonetization and apprehension over GST made a sizeable number of customers hold back on their purchase.

"I am not saying that the sales will suddenly increase in January or in February, but we expect it to increase from here," said Mayank Pareek, president, passenger vehicles business unit at country's largest automobile company Tata Motors on the sidelines of the launch of its SUV Hexa in Mumbai on Wednesday.

The vehicle has been priced starting at Rs 12,08,798 for manual transmission variant and Rs 14,98,382 for automatic version. The top-end variant is priced at Rs 17.43 lakh.

When asked whether the effect of demonetization can still be felt in the rural market as it is dependent on cash to a greater extent, Pareek added, "It's all a myth that rural economy has lesser money or it does not buy such-and-such category of products. I can tell you from my extensive experience that rural and semi-urban economy at times may have more money to spend."

Speaking at the event, Guenter Butschek, CEO and MD, Tata Motors, said that initially the waiting period for the car will be eight weeks, though he expects it to come down during the following months. "We will soon be making many more announcements in the near future as we launch more products and widen our portfolio," Butschek added.

Following the demonetization announcement, the automobile industry saw a decline of 1.36% in sales in December as several vehicle manufacturers cut production to align with the stocks at dealerships. However, the industry still managed to stage an overall year-on-year growth of around 9.17% in 2016 as per the figures available with Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).

Tata Motors