Pawan Goenka was enticed back to India by Anand Mahindra over two decades ago. Since then, the IIT engineer has tranformed the face of the company by leading the development of the Scorpio and XUV500. But now as the Executive Director of the Automotive and Farm sectors of the conglomerate has another major challenge on his hands, how to prepare the engineering firm for the future of mobility.
“We don’t really know how mobility will look a decade from now”, Goenka says quite frankly. “We don’t know whether electric or hybrid cars would have taken off by then. We don’t know if autonomous vehicles would be on the roads”, Goenka’s answers posing more questions.
However, Goenka feels that with the growth of public transportation in India, there will be more people using it and that will lead to interesting market segments. “Men in suits will start using the metro like they do in london and Tokyo. How will they move the last mileIJ I see interesting solutions there.”
In fact, Mahindra is working on such solutions with their experience in electric vehicles. “We already have an operator of electric vehicles in Bangalore that uses the e2o and in Delhi we have delivered 15-20 of our new e-Verito to an operator who will eventually take 50 vehicles. The Governments of Karnataka and NCT have been really proactive over here”, Goenka says adding that he feels that electric vehicles will do better with fleet operators rather than as personal vehicles.
Additionally, Goenka sounded upbeat about the market prospects of the company. “The monsoons have been as expected and, in fact, until now the only major shortfall has been in parts of Rajasthan. We have seen the tractor market increase by 15 per cent this last quarter, which is much higher than our prediction. And our growth has been better than the markets, giving us a share of 48.3 per cent which is out highest quarterly share in a decade.”
The overall positive sentiment has also powered sales of Mahindra’s utility vehicles and while commercial vehicle sales have been weak of late, it is after a year of great growth. Sales in three-wheelers and light commercial vehicles has been strong, Goenka added.
However, Goenka did highlight the fact that Mahindra’s two-wheeler business has been flagging. After a recent downsizing at the factory the company is reformulating their strategy in this market and should make an announcement soon.
As regards the acquisition of Italian design house Pininfarina, Goenka said that first and foremost the acquisition was majority owned by Tech Mahindra to expand their engineering services business. However, there might be engineering and design work done for Mahindra vehicles and he added that Pininfarina is working with Mahindra commercial vehicles. There is also the likelihood of introducing a Pininfarina branded product as well. However, he ruled out the introduction of a Ssangyong product in India but said that the X100 platform of the new Ssangyong Tivoli will be used on a future Mahindra product.