Our e-car Battista is new centre of gravity: Anand Mahindra

Fresh from the launch of Battista touted as 'fastest' e-car the at Geneva Motor Show, Anand Mahindra, MD and Chairman, Mahindra Group, talks about the the company's ecosystem and all that goes into it. He spoke to ETNow.

Edited excerpts:

Your group has unveiled the world's 'fastest' e-car Battista at Geneva Motor Show. Unbelievable, isn't it?


You use the right word unbelievable. Somebody asked me earlier if this is a proud moment for you and I said I am in a state of disbelief. Our business is not just about money.

People assume it is about your RoI and of course, it is but the biggest joy of business that comes when you envision something, when you conceptualise something and it just leaps out of paper and becomes reality. This is one of the moments there. So, it is emotional of course but I am in a state of suspended animation right now. I am pinching myself, but yes it is a moment, it is a big high.

What is interesting about the Battista is that how quickly it was done and the scale and level to which it was achieved. Clearly, this was done outside the Mahindra ecosystem and I just wanted to understand... I think that was necessary because if you put it in the bigger framework of Mahindra making thousands and thousands of vehicles, this sort of a project would probably get really delayed. So, was creating completely a separate ecosystem in Europe absolutely crucial for this?

First of all, it is interesting you said this was out of the Mahindra ecosystem. I am hoping that in a few years from now, people will say this is Mahindra’s ecosystem that we understand as to how to incubate projects outside, what was our own core area or structure precisely because we understand when something needs to be nimble and in a startup you need passion, where you need people who are going to be working because they feel part of the ownership of the company.

If you look around, we are doing that more and more. We incubated smart shift which was frankly in the e-mobility space. We started up Glyd now. We have done Jawa also in a very similar model. It is outside. Mahindra is going to be a company and a group where you are going to see all kinds of ecosystems. Arguably, this is the Mahindra ecosystem. It is global and yes, did it have to be international? Of course. We are talking about a segment which is so rarefied, which caters to the globally affluent and now the affluent who have a conscience and wants sustainable luxury that it had to have a European imprint.

After all, the brand is European and that is why it was necessary to treat it as a different centre of gravity.

You have been EV evangelist for a long time. You have really been committed to it. Reva became Mahindra electric. You have been first mover over there. But quite frankly, the consumer does not feel the same way. A) the EV sales are absolutely non-existent. Of course, policies are not helping. You got FAME II, it is not really helping. There is nothing for the private owner. Do you think EVs are still there or it is just too much hype because quite frankly, the IC (internal combustion) engine still has a lot of legs and so much can be done and sometimes I think are we getting too far ahead of us.

Well, this is a good question to ask Pawan (Goenka) who you will be talking to now because he has been talking about the ICE engine publicly.

What I meant is as an EV evangelist...

As an EV evangelist, we are not the ones who created the hype. You know there are a lot of academics from various Ivy League Universities who come and say by 2020 every car will be electric and they show that picture of Manhattan and where there were only buggies and then, suddenly it changes.