The Jaguar Land Rover Deal by Tata Motors was one of the most talked about mega acquisition by any Indian Company – You could literally term JLR as a sick unit when it was bought out by Tata Motors in 2007 – Both these iconic brands were making heavy losses under the previous Ford Management.
When Tata took over these brands – many experts believed that it was not a right move for Tata Motors (some of their other acquisitions were also termed wrong). The stock markets also did not like the deal, and it showed heavily on Tata Motors share prices.
To start-off, these brands were super luxury car brands and with their major markets being America & European countries. Tata Motors on the other hand could not really be termed as Global brand with majority of their revenues coming from India alone when they acquired JLR 3 years back.
Tata Motors JLR Turnaround
However, Tata Motors have proved all their detractors wrong and have turned the Jaguar, Land Rover fortunes into gold, that too in 3 short years! As a country we should be proud of what Tata Motors has achieved to do!
Infact, in 2009, Tata Motors suffered an annual loss of over half a Billion dollars due to slump in Land Rover & Jaguar sales – It really looked like Tata Motors had put a foot wrong with JLR deal.
Last week Tata Motors announced its annual numbers and it revealed that more than 80 percent or $1.7 billion of its bumper $2.04 billion annual profits came from the JLR unit alone.
When Tata Motors took over in 2007, Jaguar had annual sales figures of 15,700 cars and Land Rover had sold just under 50,000 cars. In just 3 short years, Tata Motors has managed to sell a whooping 244,000 Jaguar & Land Rover cars globaly!
Tata Motors have managed to do this in spite most of the European countries, which are JLR’s major markets, still struggling under recession.
With this turnaround Tata Motors have proved that they are more adaptable to the demands of dynamic global automobile market and now stand tall amongst their global competitors!
What do you think about this JLR turnaround ?