Tata Nano Garners 500,000 Orders

Tata's Nano: the little car that could. Certainly looks like it; the Nano is taking India by storm. Truly a people's car in the truest sense; the Nano car nobody (including me) thought was likely to be produced at such an incredible price.

As you may have heard, Tata has used a unique process in the way it's selling the Nano. Order forms have been sold to various distributors who collect the orders. This includes people who will finance the car, like the State Bank of India (SBI). The SBI is estimated to be reponsible for over 25% of orders. Tata says it has sold over 500,000 of these forms since April 1st (the date they went on sale), with nearly all translating into sales.

The company estimates that by the time the ordering period ends on April 25th (it begain on April 9th) it will have received anywhere from 750,000 to 1,000,000 orders. That is a crazy large sum and it only begins to scratch the surface of sales potential in the country and others around the globe.

Tata intends to produce 100,000 vehicles in the first batch, with the lucky 100,000 to be selected by a computerized lottery process. Tata intends to announce who's getting the first 100,000 within 60 days of the close of orders.

The process should net Tata over $6 million from all the forms, before any vehicles are sold. They expect to start delivering the Nano in July of this year. I wonder what kind of capacity they have? These are huge numbers here. With so many people in the country and widespread lower income families, there are millions more in sales in the years to come just in India alone. The company could be sold out for years, even just with this kind of orders. No doubt a very impressive figure.

I wonder if the Nano could someday be the best selling car in the world. Of course it's very soon to speculate about anything like that but it's definitely within the realm of possibility, considering the car's $2,500 price tag. Tata visiting companies to get "green ideas that are ahead of the others" etc etc