TATA Venture - VENTURing Again Into A New Segment

Tracked By NAGENDRA SIVATEJA

TATA Motors, unveiled an MPV targeting the rural customers and the middle class primarily. It’s the TATA VENTURE. Tata again brought a new segment than competing with an existing product/segment. It previously showcased this by creating brilliant models like TATA Ace, and TATA Nano. These show that TATA is increasingly following the classic theory of Blue Ocean strategy.

The vehicle seems to be positioned as a vehicle which can be used as both commercial and passenger vehicle. It can be used as a taxi, a van and given its contemporary design (at least when compared to similar vehicles from FORCE and PIAGGIO which have large passenger capacity), it even can be used for weekend getaways. 

The front look of the vehicle clearly indicates that it is based on the ACE platform. Thank goodness that TATA is changing its design philosophy of its models as all its previous models were mainly used as commercial vehicles and taxis though they were not positioned that way.

Also, VENTURE seems to compete with the EECO from Maruti Suzuki. Though both the vehicles are positioned similarly, if not same in the market, EECO clearly wins on the pricing with the highest variant costing a neat 1.5 lakh lesser than the VENTURE. This low price is mainly due to the absence lot of features like power windows, steering, two-tone upholstery, HVAC, space et al.

Considering the branding strategie, TATA might use brand product strategy: ‘TATA Venture’ rather than ‘VENTURE by TATA’ which is a product brand strategy which doesn’t go with low end, less appealing products.

Promotion: The vehicle is launched in Rajasthan with a tag line ‘Bade dil wala’. The tag line connects well with the core attribute of the vehicle i.e. space and the way it caters to various functions it can perform but fails to recognise the target segment in the ad. One should watch for this space once the TVC rolls out to understand how connected the ad is to the target segment.

Lastly, as said above, one can see that TATA is trying hard to overcome the ‘taxi-look’ image for its vehicles and bringing out newer and more appealing designs to the market. This can be seen from the PIXEL; recently launched at the Geneva Motor show. Its association with Italian design companies I.D.E.A and Pininfarina has clearly paid off. Now it’s time to see how the VENTURE performs!