Why are people buying cars in a world where they can access cars?: Anand Mahindra

Mahindra & Mahindra Chairman and Director Anand Mahindra talks about strategies and philosophies with ZEEGNITION's editor-in-chief Adil Jal Darukhanawala.

Adil Jal Darukhanawala: At the launch of any car or vehicle in this country, you normally see CEOs and Managing Directors talking about tech-specs and the amount of money invested. But Anand Mahindra is different. He talks about love, he talks about passion. 

Anand Mahindra: I’ve now been in this business for a quarter of a century. I have learnt many things. It's not as if i couldn't come out there and spout the technical specs of the car. Increasingly, why are people buying cars in a world where they can access cars? We’re entering an age of access. It’s frightening when you talk to young people and you say, ’you going to buy a car’, they say ‘no, I’ll use Ola, I’ll use Uber.’ So why will they buy a car?

I’m not negative about them wanting to buy cars; they will buy cars they love. They will buy cars about which makes them say, ‘I want to buy this car. This has to be mine; it says something about me’ an emotive aspect.

Sometimes in business, we’re too scared to talk about the so-called soft aspects. Somehow we think, we’ll sound silly.

So I said look, I may sound like some hippie from the 1960s talking about love and peace, but that’s a strategy today. I think we have to build cars like the people we love. 

AJD: How much of this aspect has helped not just with the TUV300, but in a lot of other areas in your automotive division? Because you have to have passion, even for a truck, and it’s a capital good! So how do encourage that sort of thing?

AM: Absolutely. I’m glad you noticed that. Empowerment is a nice word, it’s easy to say but hard to do. Especially when you love the business, and when it’s so tempting to remain involved with every aspect of it. Fix the headlight here, say ‘no I don’t like this, ‘change the upholstery'; it takes a lot of stamina and will power to stay out of it. But if you don’t stay out of it, and you don’t let other people get involved. That’s not empowerment. 

AJD: How much have you stayed out when the engineers or the packaging guys or the designers were doing their business?

AM: What I’m really happy about is that today, it’s not a push system, it’s a pull system. What I mean by that is that I don’t impose myself on people. They call me; Pawan (Goenka) calls me and says, ‘Anand, we want you to come down and take a look at these cars because we want your inputs’. So as long as they believe my inputs are credible, they respect them and find them valuable, they will call me and I’m, in that sense, involved with almost every product they bring out in terms of design. The moment they feel that my inputs are not helping them succeed, they will stop consulting me and I’m not going to object. 

AJD: On what sort of a timespan do you involve yourself, as far as strategizing over the long term for product cycles, new model range going across, because that’s also very important?

AM: Frankly I come in at two major areas, one is on people themselves. Number one, I have to select the people I have to empower. But beyond that, strategy is a big part of where I come in to give inputs. The way we do that, again, is not in a manner which is imposed, not in a manner which is prescribed; it happens at the strategy war rooms which is a cycle that we have every year. We have operational war rooms, strategy war rooms, budget war rooms. Strategy war rooms take place usually in around October-November of every year and that’s where me and my team and corporate come in. And once again we challenge, we ask questions, we provoke, we provide alternate scenarios and then we demand answers. But we do not say that this is what you will do. And that’s the difference, I think, which is the Mahindra way. 

AJD: With the TUV300, you have stayed true to your legacy…

AM: Three double ‘O’!

AJD: Three double ‘O’, I stand corrected! This is another trend -- Scorpio, Bolero -- the O has to be there, it has to ring! But you’ve stayed true to your legacy, with a body on ladder chassis which is rather unique. Except for a few Americans, you are the only one else in the world with a true blue setup like that. How conscious was this decision?

AM: We know that’s our heritage, that’s our legacy, you don’t give up IPR (intellectual property rights) like that, branding like that, willingly. Why should you? When I first met Bob Eaton who used to be the head of Chrysler back in the ‘90s, I remember telling him: you know, I’ve been making jeeps longer than you. We started with the Kaiser Jeep company before American Motors, before Renault, before Chrysler. That’s our heritage, we have as much right to it as the Chrysler of today. So why should one give it up? 

AJD: It’s very important that you mentioned Bob Eaton’s name because as I see it, the inspiration of the Jeep Cherokee at the front end of the car is also part of the legacy.

AM: And it’s ours. If anyone says we’re copying it, we can rightfully say that we’ve been doing this since 1947 for God’s sake! 

AJD: The most pleasant thing which I saw in the TUV300 is your emphasis on doing everything in-house with the right contemporary technology. The engine is a key and point; three-cylinder engines are inherently known for their bad vibes, but this is smooth as silk. 

AM: It’s a beautiful drive, it’s a new platform, and it’s a new powertrain completely. I’m very pleased with what they’ve done.

AJD: MRV (Mahindra Research Valley) is paying off big time?

AM: It’s a rhetorical question because this kind of product would not have come without that kind of input.  

AJD: You’ve also been in trucks big time. Is the commercial vehicle sector posed for take-off?

AM:  It is picking up as you know, the signs are better, they are growing at double digits now. Is it back to where it was? No it’s still 30% lower than what it was in 2012 so the upside is enormous. But yes, it’s going to pick up and that will happen when the government invests in infrastructure and gets the economy on a new trajectory. Trucks are linked directly with the rate of growth of the economy.