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Ratan Tata was passionate about Nano car: 'Made a promise, delivered'
Ratan Tata was known as the father of Indico and Nano cars in India.
Ratan Naval Tata, the former Tata Group chairman breathed his last at south Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital at 11.30 pm on Wednesday. A Padma Vibhushan recipient, Tata, had been hospitalised in intensive care since Monday.
Tata joined the family firm after acquiring a B.S. in architecture from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in 1962. He became chairman of Tata Industries a decade later and in 1991, took over as the chairman of the Tata Group from his uncle, JRD Tata, who had been in charge for more than half a century.
Tata, who was known for his philanthropy and was a respected industrialist, oversaw Tata Motor's growth in the passenger vehicle segment. He was known as the father of Indico and Nano cars.
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With Tata Nano, which was popularly known as ₹1 lakh car, he aimed to turn the populace into car owners. The decision, however, did not turn out to be a massive success story as hoped by Tata Motors. Ratan Tata, however, said that he was still proud of the car.
“I remember seeing a family of 4 on a motorbike in the heavy Bombay rain — I knew I wanted to do more for these families who were risking their lives for lack of an alternative. By the time we launched the Nano, our costs were higher, but I had made a promise, and we delivered on that promise… Looking back, I’m still proud of the car and the decision to go ahead with it,” Ratan Tata told Humans of Bombay in 2020.
‘Nano was meant for our people’
In 2022, Ratan Tata, in an Instagram post, spoke about Tata Nano, and said that the company was initially thinking of how to make two wheelers safe, but eventually decided to work on a design for a car.
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“What really motivated me, and sparked a desire to produce such a vehicle, was constantly seeing Indian families on scooters, maybe the child sandwiched between the mother and father, riding to wherever they were going, often on slippery roads,” he wrote.
“One of the benefits of being in the School of Architecture, it had taught me to doodle when I was free. At first we were trying to figure out how to make two wheelers safer, the doodles became four wheels, no windows, no doors, just a basic dune buggy. But I finally decided it should be a car. The Nano, was always meant for all our people,” he added.
