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What makes the Mahindra Scorpio click
Posted on 19 Jun 20127,124 Views Comments
The idea behind the Scorpio was to offer the shout value of Pajero at an affordable price.
The year is 1997. Gateway House, the headquarters of Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), located close to the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal hotel, is the venue for a board meeting headed by Keshub Mahindra, chairman of M&M. Few in the boardroom know that the project being considered will change the perception of the tractor-maker forever and become the career defining moment of then vice-chairman and director, Anand Mahindra, and his acolytes.
"Let's Go", the two words spelt out during the board meeting literally lay down the future path for the maker of utility vehicles and tractors. This is the motto for the company's most audacious project: to build India's first indigenously developed affordable Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), a task never tried before. It's called Project Scorpio.
The SUV became a roaring success. But it meant more to the company than a great new vehicle. It brought the confidence to make more audacious moves, to forge strategic acquisitions and to build new products and businesses from scratch.
Fifteen years hence, Scorpio has become an iconic product in India which, even today, is in short supply. On an average, 109 Scorpios are sold daily. Over 4 lakh units have been sold globally since the launch. It is an SUV which not only defined M&M's future, but also opened up a new market of affordable SUVs.
Pawan Goenka, president of automotive and farm equipment sector at M&M and one of the key architects behind the project, recalls how the company was at a crossroad at the time: "We had three options, to sell products licenced from MNCs, develop a big 10-seater car or build a new product from scratch. The last choice was the toughest, but we chose that option."
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