Avatar Posted by manishbhau 1589 days ago (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
Category: General | Tags: tata car motor 1 lakh car small car
In mid-2005, just 18 months after group chairman Ratan Tata had announced his intention to produce the Rs 1 lakh car, not everything was going on smoothly at the project.

A small team of top professionals who were assigned to the project had not even come up with a concept for the car. For a brief while, employees believed that the small car would just remain Tata's dream.

The mood was like that till young engineer Girish Wagh entered the picture.

Fresh from his success of making and launching the small truck Ace, Wagh was given a target of 30 months and a clean sheet of paper to work on the project.

People associated with the project say that, for some reason, he was even told to refrain from looking at the work done so far. Even within the company, Tata wanted to signal that he was looking for fresh ideas.

Though Wagh had successfully built a small truck, designing a car was a different ball game for him. In the truck project, his team had done away with all luxury to keep their costs low but in a car, good seats were needed as standard equipment. Wagh, of course, knew where to start by assembling a team of young engineers who could think differently.

Soon after he took over, he floated an internal advertisement to recruit people for the project. Thousands of engineers applied but Wagh personally interviewed the shortlisted candidates and made his choices. Many of the engineers happened to be from the company's Executive Selection Scheme (ESS), who are chosen for a fast track career in the company.

Wagh also bought a handful of his confidantes from the Ace project but chose to leave out others. He did that to make sure that the mindset of creating a truck was kept out from this project.
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