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Indica bookings at 115,238 mark record demand for new car

The Tata Indica bookings, which closed on January 23, have had an overwhelming response from the public with 115,238 full payments being received by Telco against a planned sale of 10,000 vehicles in the first phase.

The response comes in the midst of possibly the worst recession that the Indian automobile industry has faced in recent times.

Another distinctive feature of the bookings has been the high number of direct non-financed payments that have been received.

Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company Limited today decided to accept 50,000 bookings from the current lot for the second round of priority allotments so as to provide an opportunity of owning Indica to close to 50 per cent of the customers who may not figure in the first round of allotments.

The company will be writing to all such customers, giving them an option to either retain their bookings with the company for the second round of generation of 50,000 allotments or seek a cancellation.

Letters will be sent to customers in the first week of February 1999, seeking thier responses by February 20. Priority numbers for the next 50,000 cars will be generated in the last week of February for deliveries to be effected from April-May 1999 onwards.

Telco expects to complete all deliveries by March 2000 at the latest although efforts are being made to step up the rate of production so as to fulfil the demand at the earliest.

All customers who choose to retain their bookings with the company for consideration in the second round of 50,000 allotments and are thereby selected amongst the 50,000 priority numbers generated, will be entitled to an interest payment of 11 per cent per annum effective February 1, 1999 till the date of delivery of the car.

The refunds of those customers who do not figure in the second round of priority allotments will carry an interest of 10 per cent per annum from February 1,1999, till the date of refund. Any later cancellations from the 50,000 allottments of the second round will carry an interest rate of 11 per cent per annum.

A total of 10,000 customers will be randomly selected and allotted priority numbers for deliveries planned to commence from the second week of February and likely to be completed by March-April, 1999.

Although Telco had gone into the bookings programme with the decision of refunding the balance payments received beyond the 10,000 randomly selected bookings, there have been increasing requests from customers, financiers and dealerships alike to retain the payments of interested customers for consideration in the second phase of bookings, which were being contemplated by the company sometime in March.

In view of the large number of customers who stand to be disappointed if the company were to refund payments beyond the 10,000 allotments of the current phase, as also to obviate the need of those interested, to register themselves afresh in the next round of bookings, the company has decided to do away with the next round of bookings in March and consider the balance current bookings received for the generation of the next round of allotments.

UNI

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