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Nearly 72 hours before the launch of his dream car, Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata spent 90 minutes with ET for a one-on-one on the making of the people's car. He shares the trials and tribulations he faced during the journey. Here is the full text of the interview.
Q: Are you nervous? Is this much bigger than the launch of Indica?
I think I was much more nervous during the launch of Indica because we had never been in car manufacturing before. We were venturing into a new segment. We are again venturing into a new segment but in a product line in which we have 10 years of experience now.
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At the time of the Indica launch, you did not know whether the market would accept you becoming a car manufacturer from a truck manufacturer.
We took some widely publicised goals at that time that we would be as big as the Ambassador, or we would have the same size of the Maruti or we would have a diesel engine. We made those statements. We didn't know those would be the kind of things the market would go for. So, I think at that time we were much more apprehensive and nervous than we are today.
Q: If one would really start at the very beginning, what really was the trigger for the idea?
Basically, just as an Indian, you know, I would be as concerned of my-self as one of the rickshaw pullers in Calcutta running with a rickshaw behind with two people sitting back. It bothered me. My mind will start thinking: Can we put a bicycle there? The same thing bothers me when I visit a plant also. The workers are bending over when the work piece should be raised or maybe they should sit in a pit or what-ever. Because I think human fatigue is something that affects safety.
So in this particular case, you could not help but notice that there were three or four family members on a scooter, the kid standing in the front, the guy driving the scooter and the wife sitting side saddle holding a little kid. And when you're driving a car, you certainly say, Oh my god, be careful, they may slip. Add to that slippery roads and night time too. Any of these reasons can be dangerous for transport. That does not mean that the scooter should not exist because scooters are an evolution of bicycles and it is all the path of prosperity.
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And this seemed like a dangerous form of transport. So, I, to be frank if I might go through the process, I asked myself, what if you put two wheels on the back that will give greater stability? If you build a bar over the top could you save the occupant? I will stop there and come back.
Last year, to my surprise I found that BMW had produced a scooter with the same bars that I had thought about with rubber bumpers on the side so that if they (the riders) fell they wouldn't hurt themselves and the seat there had a seatbelt. And I thought, that's exactly what I had thought about. The fact was that BMW had put this out though it was not successful and they had withdrawn it. But, someone else had also thought of the same thing. It had only two wheels not three.
