Tata Motors Limited (formerly TELCO, short for Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company) headquartered in Mumbai, is a multinational Indian automobile manufacturing company and a member of the Tata Group. Its products include passenger cars, trucks, vans, coaches, buses, sports cars, construction equipment and military vehicles. Tata Motors has been ranked 5th in the responsible business ranking for 2015 developed by IIM Udaipur.
Tata Motors has automotive and assembly plants in Jamshedpur, Pantnagar, Lucknow, Sanand, Dharwad and Pune in India, as well as in Argentina, South Africa, Great Britain and Thailand. It has research and development centers in Pune, Jamshedpur, Lucknow and Dharwad, India, and in South Korea, Great Britain and Spain. The main subsidiaries of Tata Motors bought the English premium car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (car manufacturer Jaguar and Land Rover) and South Korean commercial vehicle manufacturer Tata Daewoo. Tata Motors has a joint bus manufacturing company with Marcopolo SA (Tata Marcopolo), a joint venture for the manufacture of construction equipment with Hitachi (Tata Hitachi construction machinery) and a joint venture with Fiat Chrysler that manufactures automotive components and Fiat brand Chrysler and Tata vehicles.
Founded in 1945 as a locomotive manufacturer, the company manufactured its first commercial vehicle in 1954 in collaboration with Daimler-Benz AG, which ended in 1969. Tata Motors entered the passenger vehicle market in 1991 with the launch of Tata Sierra, becoming in the first Indian manufacturer to achieve the capacity to develop a competitive indigenous car. In 1998, Tata launched the first fully indigenous passenger car, the Indica, and in 2008 launched the Tata Nano, the cheapest car in the world. Tata Motors acquired the South Korean truck manufacturer Daewoo Commercial Vehicles Company in 2004 and bought Ford's Jaguar Land Rover in 2008.