Losing sleep over dream projects seems to have become a habit with industry doyen Ratan Tata!
The Tata Group chairman slept hardly two-and-a-half hours last night as he remained engaged in the dry run for the big day - the launch of 'people's car' on Thursday.
Interacting with
editors over breakfast, Tata said it was "not because of fear or anxiety" for his brainchild that he could not get his regular quota of sleep but for the dry run for the D-day.
But this is not the first time Tata, 71, has lost sleep over his pet project. On the intervening night of January 30-31 last year, Tata was on a vigil as his group company Tata Steel was bidding to acquire Anglo-Dutch steel Corus Group Plc maker through an auction.
The sleepless night at Bombay House, the group headquarters, was worth it as Tata Steel outbid its Brazilian rival CSN to become the world's sixth largest maker of the alloy in a deal worth nearly $ 13 billion.
Tata today said he was anxious, although the anxiety level was much higher when the group was making a transition from being a truck maker to a car maker. "This was a transition from truck company to car company which had a great deal of risk," he said, while recalling the launch of Indica about a decade ago.
But now the Tatas are giving a car which the country did not have, "breaking new ground with much more experience."
He said it was possible for others as well to make a cheaper car. "There will be others who will have more composite solutions in mind using different material. Hopefully, we can break the barrier," he said.