Tata Motors sales surge: can it be the next Maruti on D Street?

Tata Motors is targeting its best sales performance of five years in passenger vehicles this fiscal year, component suppliers and company executives said, with new models Nexon, Tiago and Hexa driving the optimism at the automaker that is under pressure to deliver on profitability. The company , the nation’s largest automobile manufacturer when passenger and commercial vehicle sales are taken together, is aiming to sell 2.4-2.5 lakh PVs in the year that started in April, they said.That should also take it closer towards the target of finishing among the top three in the Indian market next year. Tata Motors had outpaced the market in FY17, growing 23 per cent when the industry expansion was 8-9 per cent.Executives are now expecting as much as 30-40 per cent growth this year, thanks to the models it launched recently and those that are in the immediate pipeline. In the AprilJune period, its performance wasn’t that impressive -though the expansion of 8.3 per cent to about 40,000 vehicles was still much quicker than the industry’s 4.8 per cent growth -but it expects the momentum to pick up in the second half of the fiscal year.