The Jaguar Land Rover takeover has dragged India's Tata Motors to its first loss since 2001.

JLR lost £306 million in the 10 months to 30 March, bringing Tata to a total loss of £317 million for the year.

"The lightning struck some time in the middle of last year and there was a huge unprecedented meltdown," said Ravi Kant, Tata Motors' vice chairman. "Like for everybody else the October to December quarter was really horrible."

Tata Motors confirmed it had injected £820 million into JLR since acquiring it, on top of the £1.15 billion acquisition cost last year.

Kant said Tata was still negotiating a loan guarantee with the UK government but downplayed the importance of the talks.

He said an alternative option was to get a loan guarantee from a private bank that would enable it to get a £346 million loan from the European Investment Bank.

Asked if there would be further job losses on top of the 2000 already made, Kant said "possibly".

JLR had fixed annual costs of £250 million to keep going and between £400 million and £450 million of development spend.

The company said it had cancelled inessential development programmes and new projects but that none would affect the pipeline of new models.

Sales of JLR rose in India and China, but fell in developed markets.

Jaguar sales were broadly flat thanks to the launch of the XF model.

Kant said that, put in the context of other carmakers like Toyota, Peugeot and collapsed General Motors and Chrysler, JLR was bearing up relatively well.