[sarathlal]

Mahindra and Mahindra achieved sales of 1 lakh XUV-500, in the Indian market on Tuesday, 33 months after the vehicle’s launch in the domestic market on September 29, 2011.



Some interesting numbers;

• Launched on September 29, 2011
• Three models available at time of launch
• Price range 10.80 - 12.88 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).
• At present, 5 models are available.
• Present price range 10.8 - 13.8 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).
• Reached 50K milestone on January, last year.
• Reached 75K milestone on January, this year.
• Exported to South Africa, Europe, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Australia and Sri Lanka.
• Recipient of over 25 automobile awards.
• Limca Book of records for completing journey of 3,997 kms from Kanyakumari to Kashmir in 62 hours 20 minutes.

Read more at: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/...cle6264992.ece

[S2!!!]

A small correction. Make that 34 months

Link to news article

[maddy42]

Great car with tremondous potential. Anyone has a long term review car? As in all the issues fixed?

I had tweeted to Mr AM to check the lowering sales from the 4k numbers to the 3k. I got one of the Suits guy handling the twitter account reply back saying that they are still the highest selling vehicle in that range.
Great attitude buddy. First sign would be to accept you have a issue. It can be fixed. Not sweep it under the carpet.

[lurker]

Is this the car with the highest amount of plastics in India ? The front 3/4ths seem to be covered with all kind of plastic/ABS giff gaff. In guise of wheel arches what we have are huge plastic claddings. Is there anything metal underneath those cladding ? They have done a lot of weight reduction in this guise. How well do these hold up after a lakh kms. The XUV also does not give a feeling of solidity on road after being used to watching the scorpio. On speed breakers one can almost get the feeling of the chassis and thinnish metal jarring over such undulations.

Now 1 lakh vehicles have been sold in 34 months, and Mahindra will be very encouraged with this. The XUV needs a NCAP crash testing to ascertain it's safety especially after this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxtc1goXbEo

[rohansachar]

Originally Posted by maddy42

I had tweeted to Mr AM to check the lowering sales from the 4k numbers to the 3k. I got one of the Suits guy handling the twitter account reply back saying that they are still the highest selling vehicle in that range.
Great attitude buddy. First sign would be to accept you have a issue. It can be fixed. Not sweep it under the carpet.

Agreed, but M&M from what I'm observing is constantly working on bugs & issues on the XUV, however certain major issues still persist. My friend recently purchased the XUV W8. The issues of DRLs breaking down randomly, electrical glitches still persist. BUT the A.S.S is very up to speed on them & the issues are quickly rectified.

[swiftnfurious]

Originally Posted by maddy42

Great car with tremondous potential. Anyone has a long term review car? As in all the issues fixed?...

You should spend more time in this forum. To answer, yes; Owners confirm the latest batches are much better compared to the initial lots.

Originally Posted by maddy42

... I had tweeted to Mr AM to check the lowering sales from the 4k numbers to the 3k. I got one of the Suits guy handling the twitter account reply back saying that they are still the highest selling vehicle in that range.
Great attitude buddy. First sign would be to accept you have a issue. It can be fixed. Not sweep it under the carpet.

I do NOT find anything wrong with this. 3 years into the launch; to maintain a 3K units of a car worth 15L (considering most sales are for W8 variant) consistently is NO joke! We also need to see that the over all sales have gone down. I do NOT think any corporate will come and straight away say, "Yes - we are doing bad". The statement will always be politically correct. There is NO bending the facts here either - so I am OK personally.

[.anshuman]

Originally Posted by sarathlal

[*]Price range 10.80 - 12.88 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).

The price range mentioned is wrong. The Delhi Ex Showroom price list for XUV-5OO-

W4 FWD-1079673
W6 FWD-1202215
W8 FWD-1359973
W8 AWD-1464727

[Vahanam]

Originally Posted by maddy42

I had tweeted to Mr AM to check the lowering sales from the 4k numbers to the 3k. I got one of the Suits guy handling the twitter account reply back saying that they are still the highest selling vehicle in that range.
Great attitude buddy. First sign would be to accept you have a issue. It can be fixed. Not sweep it under the carpet.

Originally Posted by swiftnfurious

I do NOT find anything wrong with this. 3 years into the launch; to maintain a 3K units of a car worth 15L (considering most sales are for W8 variant) consistently is NO joke! We also need to see that the over all sales have gone down. I do NOT think any corporate will come and straight away say, "Yes - we are doing bad". The statement will always be politically correct. There is NO bending the facts here either - so I am OK personally.

maddy42 wanted M&M to increase their sales numbers. And the reply is that we are still the highest selling vehicle, its disappointing and borderline complacency. Even if you are the segment leader, does it harm to increase by your sales by additional 1k/month. 3K is good number and is commendable. Agree its not a joke but the reply is tad disappointing. Instead, why could not have they highlighted their attempts to increase the sales further?

[SDP]

Originally Posted by lurker

...The XUV needs a NCAP crash testing to ascertain it's safety especially after this.
...

Unable to check the video because of access issues.

You seem to have missed NCAP Austrailia crash tests for the XUV5OO. Those were done quite some time back...may be 2 years back. Search for it on YouTube. BTW, the XUV5OO scored 4 stars.

[swiftnfurious]

Originally Posted by Vahanam

...Even if you are the segment leader, does it harm to increase by your sales by additional 1k/month. 3K is good number and is commendable. Agree its not a joke but the reply is tad disappointing. Instead, why could not have they highlighted their attempts to increase the sales further?

Increasing a 1000 units (30% here) of a 15L product MOM is NOT a cake walk right? The best way to try to achieve this is by reducing the price. To widen the target audience base, M&M has already introduced a W4 variant but it has NOT clicked. Now just for numbers, why would they reduce the price (and margin) of an already good selling product. There are discounts still to the tune of 50K. Plus, every product has a saturation level. I am yet to see any products above 15L which does (this kind of) a consistent high numbers for 3+ years (save for Fortuner).

I would genuinely like to know what strategy would you opt in case you were in XUV's marketing department to increase sales back to 4K units because I can't think of anything other than a price cut.

[lurker]

I do not understand how it scored 4 stars since the A pillar is not standing up to task and has deformed under impact. The front right column caved in. It scored 4 stars but there are a lot of caveats and many loose ends. (pun intended)

4 stars. The XUV500 scored 10 out of 16 in the offset crash test. The passenger compartment lost structural integrity. Protection from serious leg injury was poor for the driver due to excessive rearward movement of the brake pedal.

there were also other areas for concern

Contact with the driveshaft appears to have caused a rupture in the fuel line. The exhaust pipe contacted the fuel tank but did not cause a puncture. The airbag cushioned the head of the driver and contact was stable. The passenger's head was cushioned by the airbag. There was concern about driver knee hazards but the components were just outside the assessment zone and so no modifiers were applied.

Also it says that the XUV that underwent crash test was the 'All Wheel Drive' varient. So what about the other varients, what structural members are missing there ? Cost cutting seems to be inherent in Indian companies so it is a normal question to ask.

[Vahanam]

Originally Posted by swiftnfurious

Increasing a 1000 units (30% here) of a 15L product MOM is NOT a cake walk right? The best way to try to achieve this is by reducing the price. To widen the target audience base, M&M has already introduced a W4 variant but it has NOT clicked. Now just for numbers, why would they reduce the price (and margin) of an already good selling product. There are discounts still to the tune of 50K. Plus, every product has a saturation level. I am yet to see any products above 15L which does (this kind of) a consistent high numbers for 3+ years (save for Fortuner).

I would genuinely like to know what strategy would you opt in case you were in XUV's marketing department to increase sales back to 4K units because I can't think of anything other than a price cut.

I am in no way saying that increasing the sales is a cakewalk. Agree with you, there is no point to reduce the prices to just increase the numbers. Honestly,I don't have any brilliant ideas to suddenly boost the numbers also. What i expected is that M&M reply what efforts they are making to increase the sales. If that is not possible (due to any reason), they could have said we are doing our best to increase sales.

Since the goal was to increase numbers, suggestion would be explore automatic and petrol options.

[arnabchak]

Originally Posted by swiftnfurious

Increasing a 1000 units (30% here) of a 15L product MOM is NOT a cake walk right?

I would genuinely like to know what strategy would you opt in case you were in XUV's marketing department to increase sales back to 4K units because I can't think of anything other than a price cut.

+1 to your view point.

Selling a 15 lac car @3K month on month for 34 months itself is a great feat.

That too, we cannot discount the fact that M&M are not an aspirational brand like say a Honda or Toyota.
Home grown company having its checkered past yet selling a premium product speaks volumes for itself.

It is a proven fact that only a price reduction/low price are not motivation enough to buy. Nano would have created world records otherwise.

W4 didnt click and from a source within M&M, W8 is selling just a tad lower than the W6 variant.

It already is a feature rich SUV and boasts of features even the Fortuner doesnt have.

Think it is a happy situation for M&M. A point of satisfaction and rest on laurels for the Marketing team

[SDP]

Originally Posted by Vahanam

maddy42 wanted M&M to increase their sales numbers. And the reply is that we are still the highest selling vehicle, its disappointing and borderline complacency. Even if you are the segment leader, does it harm to increase by your sales by additional 1k/month. 3K is good number and is commendable. Agree its not a joke but the reply is tad disappointing. Instead, why could not have they highlighted their attempts to increase the sales further?

Let's understand the context a bit better.

If you refer to June'2014 sales analysis thread, total vehicles sold in June were 2.12 Lakhs. SUVs are 10% by numbers of all sales, so overall around 21000 SUVs were sold. If I take a back of the envelope count, there are around 20 odd different SUVs currently sold in India. XUV5OO (june sales of 3000) is around 14% market-share of all SUV sales in the last month. Another 1000 would take them to 19% market-share in the SUV market. If somebody can increase XUV's sales by 1000 i.e. 33% additional on current base and 5% additional in market-share, that person can easily claim the top-job in M&M Automotive division.

Hope you have seen the following 2 graphs;




As you can see, with the introduction of W4 and other marketting efforts, they have already clawed back from 1500 levels a year back to twice that currently. Even today, no other vehicle in that price bracket sells even 1000 per month.

I hope this puts things in perspective.
About additional efforts to improve sales further, they can talk about new variants, facelifts etc, but that is typically counter-productive and reduces current sales as many people choose to wait for the facelift and new variants.

[Vahanam]

Originally Posted by swiftnfurious

Increasing a 1000 units (30% here) of a 15L product MOM is NOT a cake walk right? The best way to try to achieve this is by reducing the price. To widen the target audience base, M&M has already introduced a W4 variant but it has NOT clicked. I am yet to see any products above 15L which does (this kind of) a consistent high numbers for 3+ years (save for Fortuner).

Originally Posted by SDP

Let's understand the context a bit better.

If you refer to June'2014 sales analysis thread, total vehicles sold in June were 2.12 Lakhs. SUVs are 10% by numbers of all sales, so overall around 21000 SUVs were sold. If I take a back of the envelope count, there are around 20 odd different SUVs currently sold in India. XUV5OO (june sales of 3000) is around 14% market-share of all SUV sales in the last month. Another 1000 would take them to 19% market-share in the SUV market. If somebody can increase XUV's sales by 1000 i.e. 33% additional on current base and 5% additional in market-share, that person can easily claim the top-job in M&M Automotive division.

As you can see, with the introduction of W4 and other marketting efforts, they have already clawed back from 1500 levels a year back to twice that currently. Even today, no other vehicle in that price bracket sells even 1000 per month.

Thanks Both of you for putting things in perspective. I got carried away by the M&M reply.