Mahindra's Blue Ocean Strategy

In a recent interview Mr. Anand Mahindra made a remarkable statement - "We will create a system that is impregnable". The same could be highlighted from Mahindra's current position - it is the only company in the world to enjoy its presence in all mean of transportation, i.e. 'Air', 'Land' & 'Water'. According to Mr. Mahindra the most defensible strategy is to do multiple things and the combination of those multiple things becomes very hard for a competitor to emulate.

Air:

Recently Mahindra Aerospace & Government's National Aerospace Laboratories announced the successful maiden flight of their jointly developed C-NM5 aircraft, marking an important milestone in their collaborative aircraft development programme.
This is the first step of Mahindra Aerospace's dream "To do something potent in the regional aerospace - similar to what has been achieved in Rural Transport". This is backed by acquisition of Gipps Aero and Aerostaff in 2010. Both the Australia based companies were involved in manufacturing small aircrafts and thus suited Mahindra's vision to achieve 'economical air transportation around the world'.
The group is now also seen as the Indian Embraer! Anand Mahindra believes Indians would take to the skies if flying became affordable and Mahindra Aerospace will do everything to realize this dream. The dream of "Giving Wings!"

Water:

The company's vision is to lead the development of India's waterways and grow the marine recreation industry by offering customers an experience they will cherish. This further fuels Mahindra's ideology of having a presence in almost every segment of the transport ecosystem.

Land:

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) manufactures utility vehicles (UVs), tractors, commercial vehicles (CVs), three-wheelers and gensets. It is India's market leader in UVs and tractors. M&M, through its joint ventures

with Navistar, manufactures and markets medium and heavy CVs in India.

In land, Mahindra has dominant share in all its segments -

Source: SIAM, Company Data, Credit Suisse estimates

Mahindra earns a competitive advantage via a combination of a tractor and UV business in rural India. Both its UV and tractor businesses face very little competition and given that people earn their livelihood through most of their vehicles, its sales are less discretionary in nature. And Scorpio has proven to be a game-changer for the company and has help it transform its image from a people-mover to luxury SUV manufacturer. It has also become the group's flagship for expansion into new market. 

One in two tractors bought today in India is badged M&M after the acquisition of Punjab Tractors. Two joint ventures in China, one with Jiangling and the other with Yueda Yancheng, has made it biggest tractor maker in the world in terms of volumes!

Also the acquisitions of Reva & Ssangyong has strengthened its dream.

All this was keenly observed by famous strategist and thinker Mr. C K Prahlad and named the whole milieu as "FORTRESS MAHINDRA". Fortress Mahindra means that if you go into a certain mobility business where you can share procurement, where you can share research and development synergies, where you can share logistics, where you can share brand, you can share channel and then create a mobility web where it becomes easier to enter a mobility business that somebody else can't and easier to defend when somebody tries to emulate. 

And as the historic moment of the launch of its most-awaited XUV 500 arrives, we're sure that with this product M&M is sure of achieving its international dreams. We would like to end this post with wishing M&M all the best for XUV 500.

Reference: Business Today