India has now beaten Japan to become the third-largest auto market in the world. This leaves homegrown automakers like Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) in a very exciting space as the industry goes through global supply chain altercations, an increase in automation and a growing consumer interest in electric vehicles (EVs). According to Mahindra Group’s Anish Shah, India is very well positioned right now to compete globally.
“We’re very well positioned right now and we’re delivering a quality that’s at par with the global majors. We’re actually beating them in their own game. The Thar sold 50,000 in three days, the XUV700 sold 50,000 in three hours and the Scorpio-N had 100,000 in 30 minutes,” Shah, MD and CEO, Mahindra Group, told Business Today at the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2023 in Davos.
“Many were writing us off 20 years ago as foreign majors came to India. We’ve actually upped our game and many of them have exited India," he noted.
He added that EV adoption is moving faster than India imagined. “Consumer demand is moving much higher for electric. We haven’t seen the products coming in yet. That will happen now. We’ve just launched the XUV400 EV, we’ll launch five more electric SUVs as well starting next year. As we see a whole range of products coming in, we’ll see the adoption go up at a much faster pace,” he added.
Shah sees the adoption happening in three phases. The first phase is early adopter, people for whom being green and climate friendly is very important. The second phase, according to him, is where people will rationally look at the vehicle and say ‘am I getting a better vehicle?’ “And the third vehicle will be at a much more mass-market phase when the infrastructure comes in and that won’t happen unless we get charging times to 10 minutes. Today it’s 45 minutes. We still have some way to go,” he said.
The demand for M&M vehicles is growing across the sector. “Scorpio for us at one point was a very rural model at some point, we’re seeing great demand for it from urban areas as well because of the sophistication that we’ve got into that model,” Shah said.
India, he believes, stands in a unique position today to be able to benefit on account of global supply chains being rearranged. “The destiny is in our hands. There’s a lot of talk around China plus one, Europe plus one, etc. but why ‘plus one’? India has the opportunity to stand on its own feet today. Next five years will be a defining period for India,” he said.
The government, as per Shah, has been pro-active in terms of the interest rates that rose fairly quickly and a number of other initiatives that have helped keep inflation under control. “The increase in inflation in India has been far lower comparatively to western economies. India should not see much difficulty as compared to Europe and the US. India will be impacted but we see ourselves coming off much better,” he said.
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Anish Shah, MD and CEO, Mahindra Group 
