Tata Motors sees surging profits

Tata Motors is India's largest motor vehicle company

India's largest carmaker, Tata Motors, has soundly beaten expectations for its quarterly profit.

The company made a net profit of 7.29bn rupees ($156m; £96m) for the three months to September, up from 3.47bn rupees in the same period last year.

Analysts had forecast net income of 4.32bn rupees for the quarter.

Tata said its market share in passenger cars in India was 11.6%. It added that it had commenced delivery of the Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car.

Sales in the quarter were 79.24bn rupees, up from 70.3bn in the same quarter last year.

Nano reaches market

Tata said it had delivered 7,506 Nanos so far, made at its factory in Uttarakhand, a state in northern India.

Tata abandoned plans to build the cars in the state of West Bengal due to a row over land acquired from farmers.

The cheap car is currently being made in factories Tata already has running.

The "mother plant" for the Nano is being built in the western state of Gujarat and Tata has said it will eventually make 500,000 Nanos a year.

The Nano costs 100,000 rupees, or about £1,300.

Expensive cars

Tata also moved into the luxury market last year when it bought Jaguar Land Rover from Ford for $2.3bn.

"The company has commenced deliveries of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles which have received an encouraging response from the market," Tata said.

It said sales of passenger vehicles - including Jaguar- Land Rover and Fiat cars - in India rose by 27.3% to 60,917 in the quarter.

Earlier this month, it raised $750m from investors to pay down the remaining debt from the purchase of Jaguar Land Rover.