For his latest automotive venture, Anand Mahindra has turned Asia’s conventional industrial wisdom on its head.
Instead of assembling the product — the new GenZe electric scooter — with low-cost factory labour in Asia and exporting it to the US, India’s Mahindra & Mahindra has opted for what it calls an “all-American product”. It was designed in Silicon Valley and will be made in Ann Arbor, Michigan under the supervision of 60 relatively expensive engineers, with components from across the globe.
“This is the new animal that a global new product manufacturing set-up is going to be,” says Mr Mahindra, the Harvard-educated billionaire who took the helm of the $16bn Indian conglomerate as chairman three years ago.