Guenter Butschek

Ceo & Managing Director , Tata Motors

On the future of Racemo sportscar, renewed focus on turning around domestic business, capability of AMP platform and company’s EV strategy.

- Hormazd Sorabjee

A few months ago you were gungho about the Tamo sub-brand, restructuring the organisation and the VW-Skoda alliance. There seems to be pull back on all these initiatives. What happened?

There were two key elements to our transformation strategy at that time. First one was Tamo, which was our way of dealing with the disruptions in the market such as new technologies, business models and partnerships. The second one was organisational efficiency, where we launched a major restructuring initiative by moving from 14 levels to five, and bringing more accountability and agility to the organisation. Our focus is now on the turnaround programme, which is a subset of our transformation strategy. The plan is to focus and raise the bar of the domestic CV business, which is considered to be the backbone of Tata Motors. We have four angles of attack, i.e., top-line improvement, agile cost management, customer centricity and structural improvement.

The sense one gets is that the passenger vehicle (PV) business is not the top priority, and the new chairman N Chandrasekaran, who isn’t really a car guy, wants more focus on the bread-and-butter CV business. Is this the case?

It is not as black and white as you think. While we are refocusing on the domestic CV business as the financial and operational backbone of Tata Motors, we have not changed our PV strategy. So, as planned, we will move to a two-platform strategy. First platform will accommodate a five- and seven-seater SUV with an expected market launch in FY 201819. Second is our Advanced Modular Platform (AMP), on which the first vehicle will be launched in mid-2019.

What is the future of Tamo and Racemo? We hear the Rs 250 crore earmarked for Tamo has been deployed in reviving the CV business.