Nitin Seth, general manager, Tata Motors, asked for suggestions on how the car can be made more attractive for women drivers triggering a discussion on 'will an Indian family buy a car with feminine touches only for the female in the family though every family has males?'
In fact, the idea of online bookings, which will probably be a first for the car industry in the country, is believed to have originated during discussions on the Net. And almost everyone seems to have had a shot at designing one's own Nano -- among the more popular features on the site.
Siddharth Rao of Webchutney, which handles the online account for Tata Motors, says: "The web is a great catchment area for the Nano because people between the age of 25 and 35 are most likely to buy the car. And that's the age group which flocks to sites such as Facebook or Orkut."
What Tata Motors has done, according to Rao, is to simply tap the buzz effectively through social networking sites. "Blogging pays off these days, it's an inexpensive way to seed content, get publicity and engage prospective buyers," he observes, pointing out that there are 30,000 members in the Nano fan clubs.
On the Nano page on Facebook, there are messages from all over the world. They may not be of much use to Tata Motors right now because the launch in Europe is at least two years away and the US market will be tapped only after that. But the impact of the digital drive back home could be high.
Image: The newly launched Nano at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi on January 16, 2008. | Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters
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