Mahindra & Mahindra – Steely Show
Mahindra & Mahindra started out as a steel trading company, but within a few decades it has grown into a multi-billion rupee multinational.
Jagdish Chandra Mahindra anticipated opportunities for Indian businesspeople as India prepared to gain its freedom. With his brother Kailash Chandra Mahindra and Ghulam Mohammed, he used this to start the business Mahindra & Mohammad in 1945. An example of religious tolerance in these divisive times, Mahindra and Mahindra was conceived as Mahindra and Mohammed.
KC, or Kailash Chandra Mahindra, was the second of nine children born to his parents in Ludhiana, Punjab. After losing their father at such a young age, the brothers yearned for security and prosperity and plotted their course towards business success.
KC then continued his academic success by enrolling at Government College, Lahore, and eventually graduating from Cambridge as an honours student of note. After finishing school, he worked for Messrs. Martin & Company, where he published the monthly magazine INDIA and the Hindustan Review instead of immediately pursuing his lifelong ambition of launching his own company.
The Indian Purchasing Mission to the United States was led by KC, who was appointed to the position in 1942. Upon his return to India in 1945, the government named him chairman of the Indian Coal Fields Committee as well as the Automobile and Tractor Panel. He thought about what would happen in the coal business in the future and made plans for the future of India’s mining industry. His report for the Coal Commission is now considered canonical within the field. Around this time, he also penned the life story of businessman Rajendranath Mookerjee.
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was where Sir Malik Ghulam Muhammad received his education. After starting as a Chartered Accountant with the Indian Railway’s account department, he joined the Indian Civil Service in 1946 and worked under Liaquat Ali Khan at the Ministry of Finance.
After the Partition of India in 1947, he became the first Finance Minister of Pakistan in the Liaquat government. He was in charge of making the first five-year plans to improve Pakistan’s economy. And he helped him with the first union budget, too. In 1951, he was appointed the third Governor General.
After Ghulam Mohammed relocated to Pakistan, he and the Mahindras ceased doing business together. However, the bond between the two families remained strong for many years.
In 1948, the firm underwent a name change to Mahindra & Mahindra.
The business
Mahindra initiated the steel trade with British firms.
At about the same time, 75 Jeeps sent CKD from the United States Willys Overland Export Corporation arrived. Since Mahindra opted to enter the Jeep market, all of these vehicles have been built in the city of Mazagaon, Bombay.
Willys Jeeps were now being produced under its licence in India. They began manufacturing the Willys CJ3A jeep in 1949. This jeep was a four-wheel drive off-road vehicle sold in India. When Kaiser Motors needed Jeeps, they purchased them and had them converted to CJ3B models. The rights to produce this new generation of CJ vehicles were awarded to both Mahindra of India and Mitsubishi of Japan.
Shares of Mahindra were first traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange in 1955, marking the company’s transition to a public entity. Following this development, M&M partnered with a US producer of trucks, autos, and commercial items to create tractors. A tractor division was established when ITCI (International Tractor Company of India) amalgamated with M&M in 1977. Mahindra took the top spot in India’s tractor market in 1983. The significance of this achievement is such that it continues to be at the forefront.
Mahindra has had phenomenal growth over its many decades in business because of the many strategic partnerships it has forged with various markets. Mahindra has expanded its reach into several markets by acquiring/ partnering with companies including Maxi Motors Financial Services Limited, Automobiles Peugeot France, International Tractor Company of India, and British Telecom. After acquiring so many businesses, it became clear that the corporation needed to establish the Mahindra Group to oversee its holdings.
When it came to information technology, Mahindra first entered the market in 1986 with the launch of Mahindra British Telecom. Another company that began as a partnership with British Telecom, in the United Kingdom, and evolved into the present-day Tech Mahindra. Resorts and new business divisions were among the many projects and efforts it continues to focus on after then. It debuted a new logo in 2000 that better reflected its mission.
In 1994, the Mahindra Group split into a number of Strategic Business Units to make it easier to run all of its businesses. Farming machinery and supplies, information technology, infrastructure development services, steel trading, automobiles, and finance are the several departments that make up the whole. Because of this, Fortune India ranked Mahindra as the 17th best company in India to work for in 2018.
Over the last two decades, the Mahindra & Mahindra Group has transformed into a multi-billion rupee behemoth that now employs over 144,000 people across 100 different countries.
Mahindra and Mahindra Limited (M&M) is a conglomerate that operates in numerous sectors, such as aerospace, aftermarket, agribusiness, automotive, components, construction equipment, consulting services, defence, energy, farm equipment, finance and insurance, industrial equipment, information technology, leisure and hospitality, logistics, real estate, retail, and two-wheelers. In 2015, M&M was ranked number twenty-one on the Fortune India 500’s list of the top 500 companies in India. Mahindra Finance is also the biggest rural non-bank financial services provider in India (NBFC).
Reference
https://www.mahindra.com/about-our-story
