Davos 2026 | Anish Shah on India Growth, EVs, AI & Mahindra’s Expansion Plans
📅 Jan 20, 2026moneycontrol9 MIN992 VIEWS26 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
Anish Shah, CEO and MD of Mahindra Group, shares his insights on India’s growth story and Mahindra’s strategic priorities. He highlights that India continues to be a bright spot for global growth and that the company is actively investing in its “growth gems” to scale businesses further. Shah emphasizes that the removal of tariff barriers will support expansion, while auto and other business segments continue to see strong demand. The electric three-wheeler business has performed exceptionally well, leading the market with over 40% share and is expected to IPO within the next year. The Aerostr...
We are in conversation with Dr. Anish Shah, the MD and CEO of the Mahindra Group. Thank you very much for talking to us on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. We're talking just a day before President Trump comes to Davos, and you're also going to be part of the CEO reception that he's hosting. That's what we have picked up. Dr. Shah, take us through what the mood is like at Davos and what this means for a conglomerate like yours that has operations in multiple countries.
Good evening, Chandra. Good to be here with you at Davos. The mood is actually more optimistic than I would have expected, given the challenges we are seeing around the world. The key theme has been resilience — businesses and economies continuing to stay on path, some challenges but generally continuing despite everything we are seeing. CEOs in particular have faced lots of issues from various spots, lots of black swan events in fairly short order, so the theme has been resilience overall.
And what's the perception been about India here? Perception on India continues to be very positive because India is a bright spark from a growth standpoint. A lot of economies around the world are not seeing that as yet. A number of us from India continue to talk about the level of growth we expect to see for the next 20 years. We see a lot of companies thinking about their plans for India. We see a lot more positivity from many companies than I've seen in the past, and therefore India is going to be a growth spot for a number of companies around the world.
The list of growth gems stays the same. It's a very good set of companies that has been growing very rapidly. We've talked about the valuation collectively of these growth gems going up from 8,000 crores in 2020 to 56,000 crores now, and that's driven by some great performance our leaders have achieved in these businesses. We continue to invest in our growth gems and feel they have the potential to grow even more significantly from here.
You said that the 50% US tariffs have impacted your tractor business, and there is a lot of chatter about a potential Indo-US trade deal. Today there was talk about an Indo-EU FTA. How will this help your business going forward, and give us an overall outlook on your auto companies.
Having tariff barriers removed clearly will help, and that is something we are hoping for. In terms of our businesses, auto as well as other businesses are continuing to see great demand after some of the reforms that have taken place, the GST actions. We've seen an increase in demand that continues to be sustained, and we are now looking at adding more capacity.
In terms of capital allocation for 2026 between autos, farm equipment, financial services, and some of your new ventures, take us through how you're going to balance that out.
For us, thankfully given the performance of businesses, capital allocation really hasn't been a balance between businesses, as if one gets more and the other less. It's about: do we have a right to win? What kind of returns can we expect in that industry? What kind of growth can we expect? Can we build scale? If it's a positive view and we've got a clear strategy and strong ability to execute, we have enough capital to place in all our businesses. So it's really not a balance; it's about us continuing on that growth path across the various sectors we are in.
You said you plan to list the electric three-wheeler business in 2027. Can you take us through other plans — other companies that are close to IPO for you?
At this point we're not looking at IPO for other businesses. Our focus is on getting them to a level of scale, and then we shall look at IPO after that. The electric three-wheeler business has done extremely well. It's in a very competitive space, but we are the market leader with a 40% plus share. That business is almost ready for an IPO within the next year, and we shall then take it to market.
Your aerospace business also saw a lot of positive momentum in the last year, with some significant deal wins on the helicopter side. Do you have plans of getting into composites? What next for that business?
The business is growing at a very rapid pace. At this point we're just ensuring we can maintain a very high level of quality, which is what has given us the benefit of scale. So for the structure business, we need to deliver very high quality in the orders we want. We won $1.2 billion of orders just in the last 12 months, and once we do that, we shall look at further expansion for that business.
12 more exchanges in this transcript
Sign in free to read the rest of this interview. No card required.
Shah, A. (2026, January 20). Davos 2026 | Anish Shah on India Growth, EVs, AI & Mahindra’s Expansion Plans [Interview transcript]. moneycontrol. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1052168/
MLA
Anish Shah. "Davos 2026 | Anish Shah on India Growth, EVs, AI & Mahindra’s Expansion Plans." moneycontrol, 20 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1052168/.
BibTeX
@misc{shah2026_1052168,
author = {Anish Shah},
title = {Davos 2026 | Anish Shah on India Growth, EVs, AI \& Mahindra’s Expansion Plans},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, moneycontrol. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jan},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1052168/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
