Products from the Mahindra group are now designed to cater to the whole ‘universe of customers’, breaking down the ‘artificial divide’ of urban and rural buyers, M&M Chairman Anand Mahindra said.
Aspirations of the people residing in rural areas are identical to those in urban centres, spurred by the rapid increase in technology and communications, Mahindra told PTI . “For a long time we have been saying that there is a divide between rural and urban India. We for some time in the Mahindra group have been seeing that as an artificial divide,” Mahindra said.
The diversified group, with presence in multiple sectors, now designs its products keeping in mind varied nature of customers, he said. “In our businesses we design our products now for universe of customers. We believe that rural people should not be looked down, they have the same purchasing power and their aspirations are the same,” he added.
Mahindra further said, “We do not see any divide anymore. We think whatever we provide for urban customers we ought to provide the same to the rural customer as well.”
A leader in in utility vehicles segment, Mahindra has products like Bolero and Maxx which are more popular in semi-urban and rural areas as compared to new models like XUV500, KUV100 and TUV 300 that are in demand both in big cities and small towns.
Mumbai-headquartered Mahindra group is a USD 19 billion entity with presence across various segments including automobiles, financial services, agribusiness, aerospace defense, logistics, real estate, renewable energy, speedboats and steel, amongst other businesses. The group employs over 2.4 lakh people in 100 countries.