No plan to reduce headcount due to slowdown: Tata Motors
NEWDELHI: Tata Motors is not looking to reduce workforce due to the ongoing slowdown in the domestic market, as it expects things to get better amid a wave of new products lined up for the launch over the next few months, a top company official has said.
According to its website, the automobile major currently employs about 83,000 persons with presence across commercial and passenger vehicles.
“We do not have such kind of plan,” Tata Motors chief executive officer and managing director Guenter Butschek told PTI when asked if the company was looking at rationalising its workforce owing to a prolonged downturn in the domestic automobile industry.
He added that if the company would have liked to take such a step then it would have taken it already.
“We are now for 12 months in crisis. If I would have liked to pull the trigger, I would have done it earlier,” Butschek said.
The company is now in the midst of new product launches that include Altroz, Nexon EV and Gravitas SUV over the next few months and there is also the transition to Bharat Stage (BS)-VI norms, he added.
“I am convinced that whatever the economy is going to do, we are well-positioned in order to outperform the market ... since the entire product range is set on a different cost base, our baseline profitability is significantly better then any given point of time before. So, I am pretty positive at this time,” Butschek said.
He added that the company is taking all necessary steps in the commercial vehicle (CV) space, which continues to be its backbone in terms of revenues, to beat the current situation.
Butschek added that the company continues to do well in the commercial vehicle space and that gives the company a great level of confidence.
“We have right kind of products, our dealer network is firing and at the moment we think that we can actually surf the wave,” he noted.
The company has all kinds of mechanisms in place including cost optimisation and quality control measures, to get to the next level, Butschek said.
“There is no need at this point in time (for workforce rationalisation) because I need the capacity anyway back on the floor the time market is going to increase,” he added.
He, however, admitted that he has never seen such a kind of volatility in the market in his over 30 years of career so far.
“We need to carefully watch, need to stay flexible and agile and gain a better understanding...whatever we currently see is much more structural in nature then just cyclical...this combination makes the future unpredictable,” Butschek said.
During the July-september quarter, Tata Motors’ standalone net sales witnessed a drop of 44% from a year earlier, while it plunged to a net loss of ₹1,281.97 crore from a year-earlier profit of ₹109.14 crore.