INDIA’S leading vehicle maker Tata Motors, which owns the British luxury carmaker Jaguar LandRover, is seeing signs of recovery in the global auto sector, its chairman Ratan Tata said yesterday.
"We are seeing the first signs of recovery, but we have to work very hard to make it happen," Tata said.
"(The Jaguar-LandRover acquisition) was labelled as too ambitious, or too high-priced. I refute this. Tata Motors and Jaguar-LandRover will emerge as lean and cost-effective," he told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting.
"We are a global company now, but have to face the challenges," he said.
He said there were some encouraging signs from Jaguar-LandRover, which the company acquired for $2.3bn (£1.4bn) in June last year.
"There are new products to come," Tata said.
This month, Tata Motors said it had secured £175m ($288m) in additional funding for the luxury brands.
The chairman said that the company needs to cut costs and improve profit margins.
Its first earnings to include Jaguar and Land Rover figures showed a net loss of Rs25bn (£320m/$520m) in the year to the end of March, against a net profit of Rs21.7bn (£270m/$439m) in 2007-08.
The company launched the Tata Nano – the world’s cheapest car – in April this year.
Indian car sales jumped by nearly a third in July – the country’s sixth monthly rise in car sales – as new model launches and cheaper loans prompted customers to flock to automobile showrooms.
