Tata Motors is an automobile company founded on September 1, 1945, with its headquarters in Mumbai, India. Their main business focuses on producing cars, buses, trucks, utility vehicles and also defense vehicles. The automotive segment also includes all activities relating to the research and development, design, manufacturing, assembly and also the sale of the vehicles. Another segment of the company is the vehicle financing, as well an extra part to repair cars or accessories. Furthermore, they operate in information technology services, machine tools and also factory automation solutions.
Tata Motors has a commercial vehicle range which starts at light two-ton trucks to heavy dumpers and also multi-axed vehicles which are in a segment over 40-tons. As already mentioned, Tata Motors also builds buses, the company manufactures different types of buses, starting at passenger buses for only 12 people going up to 60 seaters. These buses are separated in three segments the light, medium, and heavy segments.
Tata Motors cars focus on cheap prices but still offer a good quality, safety, and comforts for their customers. Tata Motor has around 81,090 employees and operates in about 175 countries all over the world. Tata Motors mostly concentrates on developing markets and low-cost production of cars.
Their subsidiary Jaguar and Land Rover concentrate on wealthy countries with better economies.
Furthermore, threw buying Jaguar and Land Rover they receive new knowledge, which can help in further when developing countries rise and the people earn more money.
Since the automobile industry is a very big industry with lots of direct competitors Tata Motors has a lot of competitors. Tata's main competitors are Maruti, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Renault, Mahindra, and Nissan. All these companies which are direct competitors of Tata rather concentrate on low-cost cars than luxury vehicles. In addition, they also concentrate more on developing countries than in developed markets.
Tata Motors has a competitive advantage because of high knowledge in developing countries, but still, Tata has no absolute advantage since other companies also are located in developing countries or even have their headquarters in the same country as Tata in India.
For example, Maruti belongs to one of Tata Motors closed competitor because they both are located in India. The headquarter of the company is located in New Delhi. They have very similar knowledge about the Indian market and therefore also similar knowledge and experience with developing countries. Maruti firstly was only Indian but now is a subsidiary of the car and motorcycle company Suzuki which is located in Japan, Suzuki owns 56.21% of Maruti. Therefore, like Tata Motors Maruti also has additional knowledge about the automobile industry by their parent company Suzuki or in Tata Motors case from their subsidiary Jaguar and Land Rover. Interesting is that in 2018 the company held a 53% market share of passenger cars in India. Maruti, therefore, is bigger than Tata Motors in their own home location in the passenger car industry. Tata only belongs to the three biggest car producers in the passenger car industry in India. On the other hand, Tata Motors is the biggest company for commercial cars in India and furthermore also the biggest producer of defense vehicles in India.
Another big competitor of Tata Motors is the German brand Volkswagen. In comparison to Tata Motors, a company that only concentrates on the low-cost production of passenger cars and also on the high-end luxury production of passenger cars, Volkswagen covers nearly all prices segments from low-cost cars to very expensive cars. Volkswagen owns 12 brands starting with low-cost cars like SEAT and SKODA, supporting the middle class with Volkswagen and from there on building cars for wealthier people. Volkswagen also owns Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini and ending it with Bugatti, a company producing a limited number of cars for over 2 million euros. Furthermore, they also own Ducati, a company producing motorcycles, Scania a company producing Commercial vehicles and lastly also MAN SE a company producing defense vehicles.
Another competitive advantage of Tata Motors is that the company produces defense vehicles. This again is still not an absolute advantage because Volkswagen with its subsidiary MAN SE, Toyota, and Hyundai Rotem also produce defense vehicles. The Tata´s group history with operating in the defense sector goes back to 1940s. The group supplied steel in World War II and developed a wheeled armored carrier. Still, Tata Motors is only associated with the defense sector since 1958. The reason for this is that the whole Tata group served the defense sector and not only Tata Motors. The group has contributed to serve India´s defense needs and are first place in supplying armored vehicle for India. They also supplied over 150,000 armed vehicles globally to different government and private people or companies.
Tata Motors has one absolute advantage against all other car brands in the industry. Tata Motors with its subsidiaries Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Daewoo, and Tata technologies is only a division of the big parent company called Tata group. Each Tata company operates independently and has its own stakeholders and its own board. In total there are 29 publicly traded companies in the Tata group e.g Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy Service, Tata Chemicals. The group results into an advantage for Tata Motors since lots of research and development can be done in-house. Another clear advantage for Tata Motors is the amount of money available from the total group. Through the Tata group, Tata Motors has a big group in the background which can support Tata Motors financially if they are trying to overtake or buy another company or supplier in the market.