Tata Motors Sales Figures

Yesterday I had posted AL (Ashok Leyland) sales for the year 2008-09 and we saw that it was a y-o-y decline of about 35% hitting AL badly. TML (Tata Motors Ltd.) CV figures for domestic sales are shown below. They have registered a decline of 15% y-o-y which is much better than AL. More so because AL has traditionally done much better in recession than TML.

	March 2009	Feb 2009	March 2008	2008-09	2007-08
Domestic M&HCV	12333	8809	20555	113674	166430
Domestic LCV	16673	14583	14438	151338	146930
Total Domestic CV	29006	23392	35993	265012	313360

AL has done better during recessions because of its pro goverment sales strategy. AL has also piped TML when it came to selling to Municipalities, Defence etc. - all government agencies or bodies.
Since TML has done much better than AL this time around, it clearly means that there has been a shift in sales strategy from TML. There has been a clear focus on sales to government through aggressive bidding on tenders.
It will also be interesting to see how much has TML been able to penetrate the south India market, which traditionally has been a strong foothold of AL. Vice versa it will also be interesting to note AL sales in north and east India which traditionally have been TML markets.

But whatever may be the numbers, it is clear that AL's sales strategy has not worked this time around or TML was better prepared with a strategy to uproot AL from its traditional strongholds. Going forward it become increasingly important for AL to review and revise its sales strategy because though they may not agree, but they have got it wrong somewhere.