|
| Mahindra will be entering the 125cc class of the MotoGP world championships with its very own team. |
Come the opening round of the 2011 World Championship MotoGP season and Indian giant
Mahindra & Mahindra will embark upon a path never tread before by any Indian corporate
in the world of motorcycle road racing. Mahindra will be entering the 125cc class of the
MotoGP world championships with its very own team. Contrary to what anyone would expect
the reasons for this, it is a unique opportunity where Mahindra has employed all its
strengths across companies in its portfolio as to showcase its technological muscle and
its marketing savvy, which would by extension highlight its competitive capability in the
global sphere. And of course to up its brand value and exposure as it sets out to announce
to an unbelievably large global audience what the group stands for.
The World
MotoGP Championship is the blue riband of motorcycle sport, akin to what F1 means to
four-wheelers. While Mahindra has entered the vibrant Indian motorcycle market, first by
buying over Kinetic and then adding its very own 110cc commuter motorcycle to its small
but ever expanding range, the bigger potential is what Mahindra has overseas. Its
acquisition of Italian specialist engineering firm Engines Engineering a couple of years
ago is key, not just for its motorcycle ambitions in India but also its key engineering
skills base across its automotive brands.
Engines Engineering has been very active in the sport, having made racing
machines and also specialized components for some of the world's best known racing teams.
In fact, it also has been responsible for very many specialist motorcycles built for
racing by another Indian two-wheeler maker who however has never dared venture forth
beyond our shores. Technology is key driver for this move into the sport and an
application has been made to the World MotoGP Championship series promoter Dorna for an
entry in the 125cc class for 2011. It is expected that the team will be known as Mahindra
and it will enter a team of two riders in the 2011 season. The bikes, the riders and the
team management would be made up of specialists from within Mahindra & Mahindra and
the team would be based at Engines Engineering facility in Italy.
The prime objective is not to just highlight Mahindra as a motorcycle maker but to use
the exercise meaningfully to derive technological skills, enhance managerial capabilities
on the move, and perform on a strong basis against the best rivals in the business.
Speaking of rivals Mahindra can expect to face firmly entrenched bike makers like Piaggio
subsidiaries Gilera and Derbi plus also dominant class leader Aprilia.
The entire exercise is not meant to be one of a hobbyists' nature but to compete for top
honours and present Mahindra as a globally emerging engineering and technology giant.
Group companies like Mahindra’s Engineering Services Division, its IT divisions,
Systech specialist auto components division and also of course Mahindra 2Wheelers would
all be involved in this unique exercise which is without parallel in the Indian automotive
industry.
The World MotoGP Championship is also the one which is beamed across the globe,
just as F1 is, and it closely follows F1 in the audience it caters to. The 2011 season
will be the last for the 125cc two-stroke class for in 2012 this class changes to the
Moto3 category for four-stroke motorcycles and this would also be a good test bed for the
firm to perfect its approach to small capacity mass-produced bikes which are penciled into
the Mahindra product range around the same time. Factor in the fact that there would be an
Indian MotoGP Grand Prix in 2012 at the Jaypee circuit in Noida, this Mahindra move may be
coincidental but it dovetails well in the overall scheme of things.
Given the exposure Mahindra Satyam garnered during the recently held FIFA World Cup,
the group is clear that it would marry its technological capabilities with a series that
will place it firmly on the same platform as world leaders Piaggio, Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki
and Ducati. And that as they say is one audacious but very do-able thing. Wonder why the
other entrenched Indian bike makers never opened their minds to!
Post a Comment
