Tata Motors to widen Nano's sales, service network

Head of India's vehicle-to-steel conglomerate Tata Group said he still continued to hold high hopes for the Nano, billed as the world's lowest-priced car, despite a slow sales start.

"The fundamental economies of the Nano... will continue to establish itself in the Indian market with a wider sales and service network," Tata Motors chairman Ratan Tata said in the firm's annual report released on Friday.

Nano, the 'people's car ' was inspired by Tata's desire to build a safer, cheap vehicle for families travelling on scooters on India's roads.

According to the 74-year-old Tata, the potential for such an affordable car was enormous across the developing world. Tata is to retire at the end of the year.

During the last fiscal year, Nano sales grew 10.73 per cent to 77,989 units from a year earlier, but were still nowhere near Tata's hopes, voiced at the car's unveiling in 2008, of eventually selling a million cars a year.

Tata started work on the snub-nosed car on seeing families riding scooters -- "the father riding with his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a baby" -- and on learning that the death rate for two-wheel riders on India's busy roads was three times that of people who used cars.