The Indian car-maker, which has just introduced two new SUVs – the Scorpio and XUV700 – now starts a concerted push towards establishing the brand as a genuine volume player in this market.

The company is looking at its market success in the South African market which it seeks to replicate in Australia and is currently putting together the network to sell them.

Speaking to GoAutoNews Premium at the Australian Scorpio launch, Mahindra’s vice president head of international operations, Joydeep Moitra, said the key to achieving market success in Australia was by providing high-quality dealerships and customer service to support its new range of contemporary SUVs. 

Featuring a predominantly black background appearance with red brand lettering (as opposed to the existing red and white), Mahindra’s larger and more sophisticated new dealerships will separate the SUV showroom from the agricultural side’  

It says it will expand the brand’s existing 50 ‘touchpoints’ to 60 over the next 12 months in its quest for “significant market share”.

“We want to be known as an authentic SUV manufacturer and a huge brand,” Mr Moitra said.

“The capability of the product and the quality of our dealers should be what we’re known for in Australia.

“With Mahindra’s two new products (Scorpio and the forthcoming XUV700 medium SUV), we will need to build the dealer network in urban markets and key centres such as Sydney and Melbourne.

“So the emphasis now is that with the capable product, we are attracting a very capable set of dealers. And that will be the key enabler to the growth in the brand.”

Mr Moitra highlighted the South African market as an example of what Mahindra is capable of in Australia.

“The Scorpio is already in the top three in its own ladder-chassis-based segment in South Africa within three to four months of going on sale,” he said.

“We are amongst the top five in utes and we are amongst the top 10 in terms of all brands in South Africa. So clearly a similar aspiration is there for Australia.

“I would not put a timeframe or a number to this, but that’s the direction in which we want to go.

“We believe we have a very strong player in [right-hand-drive] markets, and clearly in Australia and New Zealand, we want to have similar market share. 

“Different markets have different sizes, different dealer network sizes, and the value proposition is slightly different in South Africa compared to Australia. 

“But clearly, this is our top priority market – we definitely want to see the kind of success that we have seen in South Africa.

“That’s really aspirational for us to say today in Australia, but we want to grow in that direction. We have achieved it in a few markets and the core to this is having high-quality, professional dealerships to take care of customers and give them a fantastic customer experience, because we can provide the product – and that’s what will drive this business.

“A lot of [our existing dealers] are all high quality, so that gives us the intrinsic feeling that we’re getting the right enablers in place,” Mr Moitra said.

Mahindra Scorpio

Mahindra Automotive Australia’s national manager Ankit Taneja said that the brand is focusing on establishing its capital-city dealerships first, with multiple locations in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as Canberra and Adelaide, with other large urban centres to follow.

“We are prioritising all our metro dealers and the big urban dealers, followed by the rest,” Mr Taneja said. 

“We are targeting that we should be able to complete more than 50 per cent of all our dealer portfolios within the next 12 months.

“In NSW we are clearly in the first stage. In NSW and Victoria we are looking to establish ourselves in the metros, that is in Sydney and Melbourne, which will be followed by other important key urban cities.

“For example, in NSW we also have plans for Wollongong, which is an important city. And when I talk about Victoria, we are there in Wodonga, we are there in Ballarat and, apart from Melbourne, our top priority will be Geelong. So that’s how we are approaching to expand our channel footprint and getting quality dealers.

“As far as Queensland is concerned, we are well-covered in Brisbane and the rest of the urban cities like Townsville, Rockhampton and Cairns. 

“In WA we are covered in Perth, Bunbury, Kununurra and Geraldton but we have plans to strengthen our presence in Perth and Rockingham. In the Northern Territory we are in Darwin,” Mr Taneja said.

As for separating its farm machinery from its SUVs in these new dealerships, Mr Moitra said there was no reason why Mahindra’s metro locations couldn’t still offer agricultural equipment.

“Our farm business has commercial tractors, but they’re also tractors and products for hobby farmers. Customers in the heart of Brisbane could also be looking for hobby farmers or tractors for their own small farms, so I think there is an overlap,” he said.

“I will not rule out combining the two even for our urban dealerships … but the channel that we are putting in – the ‘Twin Peaks’ channel featuring Mahindra’s new SUV-exclusive logo will be very specific to automotive SUV products.

“The customer-handling for SUVs and tractors would be different. The tractor dealerships would be different though potentially located alongside the SUV showroom so for the customer, the handling of the brand and treatment of the Mahindra brand experience would be different,” he said.

Mr Moitra would not elaborate on potential future sales volumes, however simply said that Mahindra had increased its Australian sales four-fold over the past couple of years and that it expected to significantly expand on that going forward.

By Nathan Ponchard