11 lakh buyers, 1 lakh Nanos

With bookings for the world's smallest car closed, the question now is will Tata Motors be able to deliver?u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0

The bookings for the Nano closed on Saturday, but with an estimated 11 lakh bookings, the real test drive for Tata Motors begins now. They have to decide how to meet the gargantuan demand for the 1 lakh cars, which will start rolling out from June.

A Tata Motors official said, "It is difficult to talk about the exact numbers at present, but the response was overwhelming at the 30,000 centres across India. We will compile the numbers and announce the exact figure by tomorrow."

A city-based Nano dealer said, "If those not allotted the Nano, did not cancel their bookings, Tata Motors would have enough orders to keep its upcoming factory in Gujarat busy for the next two years even at a full capacity of 5 lakh cars per year."

Booking pattern

Tufail Khan, vice-president, Car Wale.com, the website that carried out the online bookings for Nano, said, "We have received 10,000 bookings for the Nano across 500 cities."

A breakup done by Car Wale.com shows that about 55 per cent of the bookings have been for the top-end version, 25 per cent for the middle and the remaining 20 per cent is for the base model.

However, banks did not turn out to be successful booking centres. While the Corporation Bank sold less than 1,000 bookings, the Union Bank found only 8,000 takers for the 15,000 forms it had purchased from Tata Motors. The Federal Bank managed to sell 500 of the 2,000 application forms it bought.

Tata Motors has already made around Rs 30 crore from selling over a million application forms at Rs 300 a piece for the Nano.

Rs 30 crore
The amount Tata Motors made by selling over a million application forms at Rs 300 apiece

Bulk bookings
Some corporates have booked the Nano in bulk. Linc Pens and Shree Cement have booked 1,000 Nanos each. Many from the IT sectoru00a0Wipro, Infosys, IBM and Tata Consultancy Services have also booked it.