THE MAHINDRA BRAND

One of "India's most enduring and engaging brands".

The Mahindra brand featured prominently in the most recent issue of TATA Review, (July-September 2005), titled "KEEPING the FAITH - India's most enduring and engaging brands." The issue focuses on what makes the profiled brands the successes they are, why they have captured the hearts and minds of millions of people and how they have managed to remain at the pinnacle for such long periods of time.

We bring you excerpts from the issue's introduction and a reproduction of the M&M brand story - a testimony to the brand's success.

"It is emotional appeal as much as the power of performance that enable the Tata, Godrej and Mahindra Groups and State Bank of India to shine so brilliantly on India's brand landscape... The corporate brands profiled in this issue - Tata, Godrej, Mahindra and State Bank of India (SBI) - have, each in its own right, carved out an exclusive niche in the minds of their immediate stakeholders and wider society... The values that sustain our chosen four may vary in the details, but there are two essential characteristics they share: credibility and an entrenched capacity to deliver on their promises.

Every product or service that has emerged from the stables of Tata, Godrej, Mahindra and SBI comes with a trustworthiness guarantee that consumers can take for granted... The average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company has been calculated to be 40 years. Tata, Godrej, Mahindra and SBI have buried that statistic."

Presenting the M&M brand story that appeared in the TATA Review...

The highway to success

The Mahindra Group has established the power of its brand by becoming a recognised player in the tractor market both nationally and globally.

India's urban-rural divide is as deep as it is wide. Farmer-leader Sharad Joshi even theorised it as "Bharat versus India". In these circumstances, it is rare to find a brand that can bridge this chasm. But where the Mahindra Group is concerned, it has done just that; the name draws instant recognition from both the farmer and the city dweller.

Set up in 1945, the $2.5-billion Mahindra Group branched out into utility vehicles, agricultural tractors and light commercial vehicles (LCVs), special steel, automobiles, farm equipment, information technology, trade and finance-related services and infrastructure development.

A market leader both in tractors and utility vehicles, with a near 50-per cent market share in utility vehicles and a 30-per cent share in tractors, the Mahindras also have a significant presence in the LCV segment. Its new generation vehicle, the Scorpio, brought the company the national award for outstanding in-house research and development from the government's department of science and industry in 2003.
What has gone into the making of the Mahindra marque? As Chairman Keshub Mahindra says: "It is really a culmination of a number of issues which establish a brand. But I would imagine that one criterion is the dependability and reliability of the products you make." Indeed, when the Indian farmer is your customer, no amount of sophistry can make up for quality.

It is really a culmination of a number of issues which establish a brand… one criterion is the dependability and reliability of the products you make. - Keshub Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group

Mahindra's farm equipment sector started as a joint venture in 1963 with International Harvester Inc. Then called the International Tractor Company of India (ITCI), it gave a fillip to India's green revolution, initiating the mechanisation of Indian agriculture. Merging later with the parent company, the farm equipment division has the distinction of being the first tractor company in the world to win the prestigious Deming Application Prize in 2003.

The Mahindras sell tractors not just in India but overseas too. Its wholly-owned subsidiary, Mahindra USA, has built a considerable brand recall among users of small tractors in the US, where it is the fourth-largest tractor manufacturer in its class, in competition with some of the largest tractor manufacturers in the world.
"We were a little lucky because the products we make do not quite compete with the Americans," says Keshub Mahindra. He points out that the American range of tractors are mostly over 75 HP, while Mahindra went in with 40 HP tractors, where there was less intense competition.

Vice Chairman and Managing Director Anand Mahindra points out how the company's past collaborations (with International Harvester, Willys Jeeps and component vendors) have helped the company build its brand. "I was talking to somebody on a flight who had bought one of our tractors in Texas," he recalls, "and I asked him how he took that decision. He said, 'Well, my dealer told me to take a look at it. He said it's as cheap as a second-hand tractor, it's very good and it comes from India.' He then asked someone in his engineering company if he had heard of Mahindra and was told: 'Yeah, they are very big in India. I knew them; we used to sell forgings to them.' And that made up his mind. So our collaborations were of some value to establish
credibility."

Anand Mahindra feels there are two ways to build a brand; through legacy over time, and through promotion. "In the automotive business," he says, "the brand gets built very quickly, because it's glamorous and urban." He feels brands must be built consciously, on the back of quality products. But he doesn't believe that building a corporate brand across every segment is useful for a group like the Mahindras, which are into diverse fields - including industrial selling segments like financial services and auto parts.

This is the strategy that the Mahindras followed when they launched the Scorpio. "The management decided that Scorpio would not be linked with the brand of the Jeep," says Keshub Mahindra. "It is a lesson we learned from Toyota, when they introduced the Lexus and did not link it at all with Toyota. I think they have been very successful, and so have we," he says.

The Mahindra brand name does go on all products. "The brand value common to all our products is trust, which comes from our values of ethics and integrity," says Anand Mahindra, "but we get credibility from our legacy - we don't need to do corporate advertising. I just have to spend on product advertising. If our products are successful, the brand will get built on the back of that," In India, he says, corporate brand building is sometimes necessary, but not in affluent economies like the US.
However, the Mahindras have successfully leveraged their corporate brand for entries into new segments. "Club Mahindra is a fledgling venture", says Anand Mahindra, "marketed only to the Indian diaspora. But our aspiration is to become a well known brand, perhaps like Club Med," he says. Another successful new venture has been infrastructure, to enter which the Mahindras brought a company called Gesco, and put all their real estate into it.

Other plans are also on the anvil. There's a car project taking shape, with the French automaker Renault, and a truck joint venture in the offing with International Trucks of the USA. In both these ventures, the majority stake will remain with the Mahindras, says Keshub Mahindra. "They must think there is something in the brand, otherwise they wouldn't have let us use it," he says by way of explanation.

There's even more. Long years ago, the Mahindras went in for an overseas plant in Greece that, says Keshub Mahindra, "was an utter failure". But now, overseas acquisitions is one of the routes through which the Group hopes to build its brand globally. "We have just bought a tractor-manufacturing plant in China," he says, and a joint vehicle assembly plant in South Africa." Other acquisitions are planned in Europe and the US. And the Group is taking a hard look at what it can do in Africa; one more Indian brand poised to go global.

Christabelle Noronha and Sujata Agrawal