India's giant Tata Motors has reported a marginal fall in its quarterly net profit as sales from British luxury subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover were not enough to offset falling local deals.
Tata Motors said consolidated net profit was 39.18 billion rupees ($A718.42 million) in the three months to March, down from 39.45 billion rupees in the same period last year.
"Sustained deceleration in the economic growth, high inflation, higher fuel prices, reduced availability of finance, elevated interest rate regime continued to impact the demand," the company said in a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Tata Motors, part of the Tata Group conglomerate, is heavily reliant on revenues from Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), which it bought for $US2.3 billion from Ford in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis.
The purchase, seen by auto analysts at the time as a risky gamble, has paid off dramatically with the iconic luxury brand accounting for virtually all of Tata Motors' profit.
The firm, which also makes the ultra-cheap Nano hatchback, announced that total revenue for the third financial quarter - including JLR - climbed 16.6 per cent to 653.17 billion rupees from a year earlier.
But sales of domestic-led commercial and passenger vehicles for the quarter fell 33 per cent to 1.32 million units from a year earlier.
Revenue from Tata Motors' local operations slid to 85.45 billion rupees from 110.68 billion rupees.
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