Nitol Group, distributor of Tata Motors in Bangladesh, will start marketing the Nano car this month.
“We will import 100-200 cars and move forward depending on market demand,” said Abdul Matlub Ahmed, chairman of Nitol.
One of the smallest as well as lowest powered (624cc) cars in the world, the Nano was designed to be the cheapest car in India. However, the price of the car for the Bangladesh market is yet to be determined, Ahmed said. He hinted that it might be between Tk 6 lakh and Tk 6.5 lakh.
Used cars from Japan are most popular in Bangladesh for the high quality and reliability of the cars. Cars made in India were not able to enter the Bangladesh market for years. But this time, the Nano distributor hopes they would be able to grab market share for its cost effectiveness, a rising middleclass in the country and a rise in the prices of Japanese cars.
“We’ll import all models and look at market response. Then we’ll decide on the import programme on the basis of demand,” the Nitol Group chairman said. He does not want to set any sales target before understanding the market response.
The Nano was scheduled to be launched in Bangladesh in October last year, but the pricing issue delayed it.
When Tata Motors launched the Nano in 2008, it was one of the most-talked-about car projects. The low cost car was also the cheapest that money could buy and hopes were floating. Initially, bookings were big and stayed big for some time, until things began to look rather steep.
The Nano was bogged down by a few cases of cars failing and wiring or electrical defects, according to Tata Motors. People began to cancel their bookings and the Nano was in trouble and the carmaker failed to achieve its target of selling the Nano at even the ‘one lakh rupees’ price tag.
“Recently, Tata has updated a lot of things in the Nano and made it an appealing one,” Ahmed said.
The Indian automaker began exports of the Nano to Sri Lanka and Nepal last year. Tata Motors exported 1,728 units of the small car between April and November 2011.
-With The Daily Star input
