We'd first seen the amazing results of Tata Motor's innovative four wheel mini truck, another first for India at the Design with India Conference in New Delhi in December 2006. The red triangle that you can see above denotes the sales of the ACE, acting as a wedge between the existing two categories of three wheel trucks that it straddles. Tata was able to demonstrate with their presentation that they had really understood the needs of the market and the user, their intended customers very well indeed.
You can check out more images of the slide presentation here, or read Neelakantan's post on the Ace success story,
The Tata Ace has taken the lite, 4 wheeler carrier segment by storm. Of course it is a welcome change from all the three wheeled transport vehicles on the road. Now it will help if the Tata Ace passenger vehicle will help rid our roads of those three wheeled monstrosities that pass off as passenger carriers (in Pune for example). Bajaj has Pulsar, Mahindra Scorpio and Tata had the Indica, until it came up with an Ace. So, its up a few notches on innovation for Tatas.
A quick search of Google news brings up such tidbits as their sales crossing the 500,000 mark and its only been six months or that the Ace has made a discernible difference to Tata Motor's bottom line. One can only say that here is product category innovation at its most successful best, the ROI is measurable besides.
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