Tatas' takeover bid for Jaguar and Land Rover, the UK brands of the American auto giant Ford, may be still hanging in balance, but the group enjoys a long and close relationship (about four-year old) with the target company.
"JLR is one of our most important strategic clients," said David Myers, Chief Financial Officer of INCAT Ltd, a UK-based Tata Technologies company engaged in providing engineering and design services primarily to automotive and aerospace industries.
"We have over 200 clients in the UK and JLR is certainly one of the most important among them," Myers told a group of visiting Indian journalists in London.
While declining to comment on the intended takeover bid for JLR by Tata Motors, another group company, Myers said the relationship was close to
four years old. "We have helped them with designing a software for their portfolio and currently we have a team of about 60 INCAT engineers working at JLR," he added.
On Tuesday, Tata group's UK-based subsidiary Tata Ltd Managing Director S A Hasan had said the JLR deal was very much in the offing and the group was quite serious about it.
Incidentally, Myers said Tata Motors is also INCAT's biggest customer across the world.
Another Tata group company and the biggest IT firm in India, TCS, also shares some of the product offerings from the INCAT stable, Myers said.
"There has been occasions when we have worked with TCS. It is also one of our biggest competitors in the market as it has also been providing some similar products and services, INCAT CFO said.