Mahindra’s Roadmap for EVs & SUVs | Exclusive with Rajesh Jejurikar | Brandverse | Business News

Yeah, so Shibani, you know, the one thing we've kind of picked up over time is customers do want technology and the refinement of a car. So while the brand stands for a very rugged SUV DNA and consumers do want that out of a Mahindra, that's who we stand for. What they were not comfortable with was the lack of sophistication, if I may use that word, in our vehicles earlier. And what we've seen over the last 5 years, and the Thar is a great example of that. Right. is of a vehicle which has retained its core DNA, but it comes in a much more sophisticated, refined, tech-savvy avatar. Right. And I think that's what's led this change and transformation. Products which are leading the curve on technology, features, which is what has made the product more mainstream. Right. Otherwise, we were kind of playing on the periphery of people who liked the form, but didn't give enough for them to be able to make it mainstream with their families as well.

Yeah. So there are different sub-segments. The Thar three-door was always thought of as a niche because the going in assumption is in India, no one's going to want a three-door. That's a very specific niche. The older version that we had of the Thar pre-2020 was actually selling just 600 a month. When we brought in the Thar newer version 2020, what we saw was because the engine had become much quieter, less vibrations, noise, all of that, it started bringing in a completely new set of customers who had always aspired for the brand, but the product was not living up to their expectations. So once the product crossed the bar and the threshold of yes, this is something I can drive to work in, it opened up a whole new stream and we went on to actually doing as much as 6,000 a month of the top three door. So what was a 600 per month brand went on to become 6,000 and now combined with the rocks the top brand is about 10,000 a month. So it's a combination of the product technology. To your specific question on how did we use these learnings, what we learned out of this was customers, the form is very important. That's the core of who we are. And the term we use for that is unmissable presence. So Mahindra must have two things which represent its core. One is unmissable presence. See these cars around? You see them anywhere on the road even our EVs. You see the car the orange one back there. That's the B6. Even at that size it has unmissable presence. So they must have unmissable presence and they must be head turning designs.

Right. Right. Absolutely. So these became the two core things. Around that we said the products must have a certain level of safety, sophistication, refinement and what we called technology as sci-fi today. So in all our products what we've tried to do is bring in technologies which customers don't expect to see at these price points. Those technologies may be available at two or three price points higher.

So let's see the evolution of the brand and the price points. We launched in 2021, so we're now in close to four and a half years. We launched it at a very attractive price starting at about 12 lakhs and went up to 18, 19. Then we saw a huge commodity inflation which pushed the price points up in this period of time, 21 to 24, commodity prices went up something like 17%. So that did lead to an escalation in the consumer prices. But when we saw that the product had crossed a price point which was reducing our opportunity to grow, we did something which is not normally done and we took a decision to cut price by over a lakh at the top end. What that did is, you know this, so 70% of the volumes we get on XUV 700 was the top two versions. That started coming under pressure at a certain price. So as soon as we corrected that, we got that ratio back. And consumers still want to buy the higher end products, versions in our products. Yes, because they're very feature packed and they come at a very good price. But we have to make sure that we always keep that sweet spot pricing in place. So when we launched the XUV 7 XO, we now have the full three screen look which is the same as what we have on the EVs. And we've kind of kept the pricing with that and a lot of other additions at the level at which the XUV 700 was. So consumers continue to get a huge value.

I think the one interesting thing about the brand Mahindra SUVs that we have today is a set of consumers who are very psychographically and demographically diverse. So if you look at our Bolero and Scorpio portfolio, they're very mid-size town rural products. Even within the Bolero portfolio, the Bolero Neo consumer is younger. The Bolero customer is the more traditional customer and is older. Now Scorpio and Scorpio N, Scorpio is a little older, the Scorpio N consumer is a little younger, which is a newer product. So even within our portfolio, we have that Thar 3DO, which we just spoke about. Interestingly, there's a lot of women customers and very young profile of customers.

I have seen a lot of pink Thars and white Thars.

Yeah, actually, the fence is not that dominant as it was a year or a year and a half back. Today, almost 8% of our SUVs are EV. We've sold over 40,000 EVs at an average price point of something like 27 to 30, 27, 28 lakhs. Which is a price point, honestly, 5 years back we would never imagine that we would be able to sell so many vehicles under a Mahindra brand at a price point of 28 to 30 lakhs. 80% of the 90 is the top end or 70 odd percent, which is 31 lakhs ex-showroom. So the brand has moved up the aspirational chain. We believe because of the way the products are configured and the fact that we are offering a very lifestyle experience. To your specific question on how do we get people to say no, there's a series of barriers. While the product is positioned around lifestyle, there's a series of barriers that consumers have about EVs. One of which was how sure am I about the life of the battery? So when we launched, we said, 'Okay, the battery has a lifetime warranty.' So that becomes one of the steps to overcome a barrier. The other was how safe is the battery? And we did lots of videos out there to demonstrate its robustness under fire, under flooding water, so on and so forth. So give them confidence that this is a really robust battery pack. The third and the biggest barrier was the range and what has commonly come to be called range anxiety. So one of the learnings that's come out of the launch is consumers are liking the 79 kWh and don't mind paying the lakh or extra for that because it gives a real world range in cities of about 500 km plus. Now for most city consumers, if you're getting a 500 km range, you don't need to charge more than once a week or once in 10 days. So your fear of where to charge comes down dramatically. I do Bandra to Kandivali which is several kilometers a day, 2 hours on the road. How many times do you charge? Not more than once a week. So which actually is, in my own ownership experience, a big pain point gone of sending vehicle for fueling. Going to the petrol pump and all of that, because this is so much easier, you're just charging it at home or in office. So it's actually a reverse positive. You address the consumer anxiety.

Precious metal rally is a momentary thing. And specially, silver doesn't affect us. So it's more the precious metals which is the rhodium and that category, platinum and all of that. So that had gone up and there was a spike around that, but suddenly that's come down the last few days as well. And of course, the rare earth material. Yeah, rare earth we've covered and we've de-risked ourselves. So the one thing we learned out of the last 4 years starting with COVID is the real core DNA an organization has to have is resilience. So you have to be prepared for new news every day and then be prepared to overcome adversities as they come your way. And that's where the organization DNA really has to be one of being very agile and very quick to respond to whatever is the latest thing that's coming up. And very often you're not able to predict a lot of these things, there are too many scenarios for you to take pre-emptive actions on. So you've just got to play them out as they come.

Yeah, why not?

So this car Shvani is actually set around a racing theme. So this is meant to be like the cockpit of a race car.