Mahindra Details AI Use Across its Auto Business

Mahindra & Mahindra detailed its artificial intelligence programme at a first-quarter results briefing in Mumbai on Thursday. Managing director and chief executive Anish Shah said the group has built 19 proprietary AI models, trained more than 1,900 employees at an in-house academy and is running more than 15 large AI projects, supported by over 50 AI engineers and specialists.

The work has been underway for about two years, Shah said, though Mahindra began disclosing it publicly only in May. It aims to be a technology leader in every industry it operates in.

In the auto business, AI agents booked more than 91,000 test drives over three to four months, Shah said. These were "customers that we would likely not have got otherwise", he claimed. In addition, about 2,600 workshop staff, an adoption rate of 85 percent, now use AI assistants to diagnose service problems.

In the paint shop, first-time buy-off, or the share of units cleared without rework, reached 90.6 percent at the pre-treatment and electro-coating stage. Shah said it cut paint use and rework and raised output. Separately, in product development, software has reduced the vehicle's drag coefficient prediction to about two minutes, a measure of aerodynamic efficiency, from more than 10 hours.

However, it also declined to quantify AI's effect on the overall development cycle. When asked whether it gave Mahindra an edge on the speed set by Chinese manufacturers, and how far it could compress a battery electric vehicle programme the questioner put at 36 months, Shah gave no figure. "On product development, we shall hold that for a future date," he said.

The company was seeing "meaningful impact" across product development and would set out the overall effect later. "We're revealing our AI work slowly, one at a time," Shah added. He described the disclosed projects as a few among many, and said Mahindra judges them on bottom line and customer experience outcomes.

Adoption by the people running each process mattered more than the technology. Shah said workers at the Chakan plant near Pune, where Mahindra builds its SUVs, had described their own use of AI on a visit last month.