Mahindra’s Big Global Bet | Rajesh Jejurikar on NU_IQ, FTAs & Future Expansion | N18V

Shivani. So, you know, 5 years back in 2020, we kind of were at a point of saying, you know, where should we take the brand and the business? And we spelt out something we called the brand purpose statement at that time. The brand purpose statement was based on an insight of people who want to live life as an adventure. Yeah. And at that stage we kind of said, let's make vehicles which are authentic and adventure ready and have a story which connects with our brand DNA and where we came from. And then we also defined what these vehicles should be and one of the principles was unmissable presence. And really, when you're seeing our vehicles on the road today or right here, they all represent this character: when you look at them, they've got to come at you and they're going to look different on the road. They also should be sophisticated, very safe, have sci-fi technology. So we have these five principles on which we build our brand, and that's the direction that goes into any new product that we do, and that's what is behind this new platform today which we call New IQ, which is it's new, it's innovative, and it's intelligent.

Yeah, so Shivanu, we certainly want to have a global play now. We are seeing, you know, with the cars that we're bringing out, India and Mahindra today is at a level of technological readiness which can allow us to compete with the best in the world.

Our success in India in the recent 3 to 5 years demonstrates that, and we want to leverage that to go international as well. Of course, when we go global, we'll be calibrated, you know, and we will take a country at a time. What we've seen over the last 2-3 years is in South Africa, that's one market where we are now in the top 10 OEM, and we have a strong brand, we have a good presence by way of the dealer network, service capability, and all of these are important ingredients to succeed while in global markets. We are now beginning to see the same in Australia and New Zealand. Okay. So you know, across countries and different markets, we will build this in a calibrated way, but these products are being designed to, of course, succeed in India because we think there's a strong demand for it, but they're also meeting all the regulatory and crash requirements in global markets including western world markets.

Well, at least you know, we'd have the UK FTA in place now. We believe the EU FTA will happen reasonably soon, and all of this will actually facilitate, you know, greater global expansion. So I think, you know, the way the FTAs are moving, we'll actually have an opportunity to build a global business. But is there some concern when it comes to the US tariffs? We've had, we didn't have US on our radar, and at this point anyway, that's not on our radar. Plus we're talking international two to three years from now for these products, so we are a while away.