Guenter Butschek, who took charge as Tata Motors’ Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director on February 15, 2016, says the future of the company is “well-orchestrated”. Speaking to BusinessLine on the sidelines of Tiago launch, the 55-year-old is of the opinion that the new hatchback, with its competitive pricing and positioning as a new market-entry product, will be a game-changer. It will also rock the hatchback boat. Edited excerpts.
How important is Tiago launch for Tata Motors?
This is the first car that actually comes out of the new processes applied, and most importantly, it’s the first product built on the basis of our newly-designed NPI (Tata’s standardised development process with stringent quality gates).
The way we have developed Tiago is as a significant part of our transformational journey. Tiago is much more than just a product, it is about our transformation in the market and it’s about the transformation of Tata Motors internally.
With Tiago, will Tata Motors be able to replicate the success story it scripted in the commercial vehicle segment?
The future of Tata Motors’ is well-orchestrated. We presented four new products in the Delhi auto expo, and these products have strong family characteristics. With high-quality standards, strong brand identities and cutting edge technology, and all these have the potential to be game changers.
We have always been ground-breaking in passenger vehicle and commercial vehicle segments.
Tiago is also a game changing product.
The competitive hatchback segment is the largest market segment in India, and the way we have positioned the vehicle as the new market-entry product, Tiago is going to rock the boat.
You are rolling out Tiago from the Sanand plant? What is the production capacity at this plant for this new hatchback?
We have done our homework and so we are very positive we can claim a good portion of the market with Tiago.
We believe that the Tiago will be a ‘pull product’, where customers would be pulling the cars out of our dealerships. We have enough capacity to meet market demands.
What is your contribution to the making of Tiago, as you have joined the company recently?
On one side it’s my passion, the passion for what I am doing and in particular for automotives.
The other one is that I am convinced that the experience over the last 30 years in automotive across different functions and global management assignments, I can bring in lots of experience in technology, processes and transformation, among others. You name it, and I can bring it to unleash the potential of this organisation.