Tata Motors may let other companies assemble Nano: report

India's largest automaker Tata Motors is reportedly planning to allow individual assemblers to put together its Nano and sell it under their own brand, according to a newspaper report.

Tata Motors started selling the Nano, the world's cheapest car in July and has since sold around 7,500 units. The Nano will be rolled out from a dedicated facility to be ready by the end of March but till then is being assembled in smaller numbers at an existing plant.

Vice chairman Ravi Kant announced at an awards function that Tata Motors might allow assemblers to set up micro-assembly sites to roll out about 10,000 cars a year, in keeping with chairman Ratan Tata's concept of distributed manufacturing.

The Business Standard newspaper quoted Kant as saying that the manufacturers may sell the vehicles under their own brands.

Kant was speaking at `The Economist Innovation Conference' in London on Friday.

Experts are, however, quick to point out that the process of handing over the branding to small manufacturers may not be quite that easy on number of considerations, the most important of which being safety, as the safety of a car is always associated with the brand.