Tata Nano booking opens today

The booking process of Tata Motors’ ultra small and world’s cheapest car ‘Nano’ opened today (April 9) and will continue till April 25 this month. The company has entered into business terms with 18 preferred banks and Non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) where customers can get financial support to book the car.

•   E-mail Article
•   Printer Friendly
•   Text-Size    

The booking forms for ‘Nano’ are available at 30,000 locations across 1,000 cities in India including company’s dealerships, branches of State Bank of India (SBI) and other preferred financiers, as well as Tata’s outlets of Westside, Croma, World of Titan and Tata Indicom.

The price of the booking form is available at Rs 300 per form, while the facilities of online booking has also been provided first time in Indian automobile industries that costs Rs 200 only.

According to Tata Motors, “only 1,00,000 cars will allotted in the first phase of deliveries, through a computerised random selection procedure.”

The booking of the ‘Nano’ is open for next 17 days till April 25 while the random selection of the lucky 1,00,000 buyers will be done through lottery process after 60 days from closing day of booking. Final announcement will be made somewhere in the June-end and deliveries will commence from July 2009.

Tata Motors has given an option to the applicants, ‘those who will not be chosen can retain their booking amount for the next phase of selection or their money will be refunded with added interest.’

The interest rate on returning the booking amount is 8.5% for 1-2 year period while 8.75% for a period more than 2 years.

Customers have two options for booking the car: first down payment and second finance.

The booking amount through down payment system is Rs 95,000 (for the Tata Nano Std), Rs 1,20,000 (Tata Nano CX), and Rs 1,40,000 (Tata Nano LX) while the booking through finance begins from Rs. 2,999 (base version) to Rs. 3,499 (CX version) and Rs.3,999 (LX version).

The Equally Monthly Installments (EMIs) would range from Rs 1,799 to Rs 2,975 with interest rates ranging from 9% to 11.75% depends upon the model, financial institutions and also cities.

Before commencing of the booking process, as many as 75,000 forms have already been sold out from booking outlets across the country, a Tata official informed.

All the selected buyers will get their ‘Nano’ within two years. After that the second phase of selection begins, official added.

The restriction of limited numbers of car would end up after two years, when the original ‘Nano’ plant that is on developing stage at Sanand in Gujarat will begin manufacturing car. In the first year (2010-11), the plant will release around 2,50,000 cars which capacity will be doubled in the next two years, Tata earlier said in a statement.

Due to the political turmoil in Singur, West Bengal, Tata Motors had decided to shift the plant to Gujarat, and the process is still going on. Relocation of plant has sternly hit the price of Nano, which was earlier fixed at Rs 1,00,000, but now it is Rs 10,000-20,000 more expensive.