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Fiat-Chrysler’s complaint against Mahindra & Mahindra in the US has no merit, said Anand Mahindra, Chairman, M&M group pointing to existing agreements with FCA.
Responding to shareholder concerns over a complaint filed by FCA in the US, “M&M didn’t go there (US market) without looking into all possible issues that we might or might not face. We are very confident that this case is without merit,” Anand Mahindra said.
Fight over Roxor design
Last week, FCA had filed a complaint in the US to prevent the sale of Mahindra’s Roxor there on the grounds that Mahindra had infringed the designs of its subsidiary, Jeep. The company said Mahindra Roxor is modelled after the original Willys Jeep.
Anand Mahindra said the company has not yet received the complaint. “We have had agreements with Chrysler in the past. We have an existing agreement and we believe their case is without merit,” Mahindra said.
On being asked about M&M’s low market share in the automotive sector, Mahindra said the company is focused more on profitability rather than market share.
Focus on profit
“Market share goes up and down. As a company we are more determined to be profitable, so we focus first on financial efficiency, making money. If we decide that profit share is secondary, then believe me market share would be very easy to gain. Pricing also determines market share. We also would like to have a healthy combination of both. We have some new launches, we hope that we will regain some of our lost market share,” Mahindra said.
He also said that the company has no plans of bringing its high-end luxury electric car to India, which is being built by its Italian subsidiary Pininfarina.
“We want to create a new segment called sustainable luxury; earlier people bought high-performance cars — you can zoom around in those cars, 0-60 miles in 2 seconds, what are you doing for your footprint on the planet and on emissions? We believe you can now enjoy high-performance, speed, and that too sustainably. They will go into the segment below that next. India may not be the best market for that,” Mahindra said.
When asked about the company’s plans to build cars instead of SUVs, Mahindra said the definition of an SUV is now very fluid and taunted the competition for selling “plastic” SUVs.
“People are calling cars which don’t have chassis SUVs; a car without a chassis is not really an SUV. The whole definition of SUV has become plastic, it is just expanding. If you were to really look at the old-day SUVs, which are ladder frame, I dare say our share has not gone down,” Mahindra said.
“The pie has expanded, the definition has expanded, there is a slight optical illusion about our losing share. The market definition has changed,” he said.
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