Tata grateful for big demand for Jaguar motors

British luxury carmaker JLR, which Tata Motors bought in 2008, has been propping up profits at its parent for the past two years. The unit sold a record 425,006 saloons and sports utility vehicles in 2013 in countries including Brazil, China, India and the United States.

The company beat forecasts and yesterday posted a 195 per cent increase in net profit for the October-December quarter of 48.05 billion rupees (£469.97m), its highest quarterly profit since March 2012. Tata’s domestic operations posted a net profit of 12.5 billion rupees for the quarter, while profit from JLR more than doubled to £619m.

The domestic net profit was boosted by a 19.5 billion rupees gain the company made from selling its stake in its Korean subsidiary to its Singapore subsidiary. With the exception of the June quarter, the company’s domestic unit had been stacking up losses since the third quarter of 2012, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Tata Motors has been suffering at home as its passenger vehicles have fallen out of favour with consumers, who are struggling with high fuel costs and rising interest rates in a slowing economy. Sales of Tata trucks and buses have also plunged on the back of weak economic activity.