Indiantelevision.com Team

(1 March 2008 9:00 pm)

BANGALORE: Tata Motors Ltd (TML) announced the kick-off of sales of its passenger car/SUV offering, The Sumo Grande, in Bangalore today.

The vehicle had been unveiled at the Auto Expo in New Delhi in January this year.

The Sumo Grande is built on the Tata Sumo platform, and is now being positioned as a family car, a family SUV vehicle for city use.

A multimedia campaign is scheduled to commence this month, informed Tata Motors utility vehicle product group (passenger car business unit) head SG Saksena.

“The amounts spent for marketing and mass media communication by us will be similar to those spent for a new vehicle launch. The Sumo Grande is a new vehicle that has the guts of the old Sumo. We have provided it with a completely new engine, body parts and the wheels are bigger than the Sumo’s,” he said while speaking with indiantelvision.com on the sidelines of a press conference.

The creative agency for the Sumo Grande communication initiative is O&M and the media buying agency is Maxus.

The Sumo Grande comes in the same price range as the Tata Safari, Scorpio and other offerings from SUV manufacturers in India.

With the Tata Safari, TML claims 20 per cent share of the SUV market of 120,000 to 130,000 units in its price range. Overall, since its launch in 1998, around 60,000 units of Tata Safari have been sold, of which 16,000 were sold last year.

This year, Saksena claims that TML has already exceeded this figure, with a month still to go for the close of the financial year. Since its launch ten years ago, TML claims to have sold more than 400,000 units of the Tata Sumo.