TATA Motors, India’s largest vehicle maker, said yesterday it raised about Rs25bn ($500m/£331m) from consumer bookings for its Nano, the world’s cheapest car.
The cash should help ease the company’s finance needs, especially to cover bridge loans for last year’s purchase of marquee brands Jaguar and Land Rover.
Tata Motors received 203,000 fully-paid orders during the initial bookings from April 9 to 25, and it sold 610,000 booking forms during the period, the company said in a statement. It did not give details of all bookings.
The basic Nano has a showroom price of Rs112,735 ($2,280/£1,512), and a deposit of Rs95,000 ($1,921/£1,274) was required to be paid at the time of booking.
The cars will be available by July this year, with a lottery to select the first 100,000 owners.
Out of the three variants of Nano, the base model Nano Standard accounted for 20 per cent, mid-range Nano Cx 30 per cent and the top end Nano Lx getting 50 per cent of the booking.
The bookings for Nano started on April 9 and closed on April 29.
