Today’s company visit to Tata Motors, one of India’s largest companies, was established thanks to one of our sponsors, Blaser Swisslube. Finding the right gate was quite a challenge for our bus drivers; Tata Motor’s plant is vast. We were warmly welcomed by the customer support manager, who has been working for Tata Motors for more than 20 years. He was a well experienced person and able to answer all our questions. Initially, we watched a video about the launch and history of Tata Motors. The delegation of Focus India learned, that the founder of Tata was dedicated to improve Indian society. Worldwide, Tata Motors operates fourteen plants, located in Africa, Asia and Europe. The Indian company has a huge variety of products, for example commercial cars, bus and military vehicles. Besides, did you know that Jaguar and Land Rover belong to Tata Holding?
In the factory in Pune, the 2nd oldest plant of the six in India, 18’000 employees are currently engaged. 300 buses are needed to transport the employees from their home to the production site. Pune has also the biggest R&D (Research and Development) section of Tata Motors, where at the moment Tata is developing environmentally friendly ways of transportation.
During the tour through the plant, different halls, as well as the training center were shown; here young Indians get the opportunity to do an apprenticeship. Afterwards they are fully included in the work force. Out of a total of 20’000 applications, only 110 candidates got the chance to start their career at Tata Motors (0.5%).
Even though Tata is one of the biggest companies in India, you will not find the family members in the list of the wealthiest people; Tata’s focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is quite extraordinary. Indeed, a significant part of their earned profit is used to support social projects, most of which are launched by the company. It is fascinating to see how such a huge company like Tata supports society. Mr Dhavale and his team gave the Focus India delegation a concise overview of the CSR projects at Tata Motors.
“I do not want India to be a superpower, I want India to be a happy country” is what the founder said and we could feel that the employees stand behind this value.
After the lunch in the building of Tata Motors we visited one of the social projects. The Tata Motors Grihini Social Welfare society was founded over 100 hundred years ago.
The purpose was to give the wives of Tata Motors’ employees a platform for social interaction and developing working skills for example suing, spice producing or assembling of electronic components. They started with 7 employees, now they count over 1000 working women. Also other local underprivileged women are included in the program and are well integrated.
After our interactive tour through the building of the project we started on our 5-hour bus drive, reaching our hotel in Mumbai, one of the largest cities in the world.
Link to today’s pictures!