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MarketFactories and dams, said Jawaharlal Nehru, werethe temples of modern India, but the country'senduring icon remains the farmer ploughing hisfield only now he just might be using a tractorto do so.The Indian farming community isincreasingly opting for mechanisation toeliminate drudgery, increase yield and ensureswifter tilling and ploughing operations.

The tractor market is primarily divided intothree segments.The low horsepower segmentcomprises tractors in the 20HP and 30HPrange,the medium features the 30HP to 40HPtractors while tractors above 40HP form the

high horsepower segment.With the increasingreduction in the size of farm holdings 93million farmers out of 116 million have plots,five acres or less in size there is anopportunity to create an appropriate productrange for this segment. In the last six years,thetractors segment has grown at a compoundedannual growth rate of 9.60% (Source: internaldata). During the financial year 2008/09,thedomestic market stood at about 304,000tractors compared to 160,000 in 2003. Despite

the vast numbers, less than 10% of all farmers

own tractors, suggesting a huge latent demandand the opportunities that exist to increasemarket penetration.The industry is expected togrow at about 5% with Mahindra Tractorsgrowing at between 6% and 8% (Source:Financial Express,Apr il 2009).

Achievements26 years of sustained market leadership is the

stuff that corporatedreams are made of

and MahindraTractors

has been a marketleader for the last 26years.W ith a 41%share of the Indianmarket, Mahindra &Mahindra is close tothe global number one(Source:companydata).As per a brandequity studyconducted byACNielsen in 2008,Mahindra Tractor sregistered a brand

equity score of 5.3 a remarkableachievementconsidering that only1% of globalautomobile brandshave received a scoreof 5 or more.The company has the highestcustomer satisfaction index (CSI) of 88 inthe industry.

Not without reason then,Mahindra Tractors

became the only tractor company to have won

the Deming Application Prize and the JapanQuality Medal, two of the highest global qualityaccolades. It was also awarded the prestigiousGolden Peacock Award 2008 in the InnovativeProduct/Services category for its in-housedevelopment of a load car, the first of its kind inthe Indian tractor industry.

Mahindra Tractor's Project Bhoomi itsmobile soil testing laboratory initiative one ofthe company's rural projects was awarded theOrder of Merit by the Promotion MarketingAwards of Asia 2008 in the Best Causecategory.

Two of its advertising campaigns forBhoomiputra 235 DI and Arjun Ultra -1 havebeen awarded the Gold rating at the SecondRural Marketing Awards, sponsored by t he RuralMarketing Association of India (RMAI) in 2008.Mahindra Tractor s also bagged five awards,the

most by a single brand,at the First WoWAwards (2008) organised by EventFaqsto celebrate excellence in Events andExperiential Marketing.

HistoryMahindra & Mahindra owes itsgenesis to the foresight of twobrothers, K C Mahindra and JCMahindra who founded Mahindra &Mahindra in the early 1940s to sellWilly's Jeeps in India.At that timethe roads infrastructure was somodest that the founders believed

that the jeep was the most suitablevehicle for use outside urban centres.

Two decades later they beganmanufacturing this iconic brand in the

countr y.The International Tractor Company ofIndia Ltd (ITCI), established in 1963 was a jointventure between Mahindra & Mahindra andInternational Harvester ( IH), UK a subsidiary of

IH, USA one of the largestcompanies in the world at thattime. Quickly the new companyestablished its hegemony inthe market.

Mahindra & Mahindra acquiredthis business in 1977 and Mahindra Tractors

came into being.In 1999 by now in anexpansion mode Mahindra & Mahindra tookmajority stake in Gujarat Tractor CorporationLimited to form Mahindra Gujarat TractorLimited and in 2008, through an open offermade in the previous year,it acquired PunjabTractors Limited.

Today, the Mahindragroup's FarmEquipmentSector has asignificantpresenceacross sixcontinents. It is among the top t ractor brands inthe world, with its own state-of-the-art plants inIndia and four assembly units in the US, Chinaand Australia.Collectively, the plants have acapacity to manufacture and assemble 150,000tractors per year.The company sells through anetwork of 800 dealers worldwide and to datehas notched up consolidated sales of over 1.40million tractors.

ProductMahindra & Mahindra seeks the activeinvolvement of the farmer in its quest fordeveloping better products.All its tractor brands Bhoomiput ra, Sarpanch,Arjun,Shaan andYuvraj ranging from 15HP engine to 75HP have been almost completely driven by the on-ground realities of the farming community andtheir wish-list.

When it t ranspired that a section of farmers

was looking for enhanced power and greaterspeed from their machines, Mahindra came up

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with the country's first turbo-charged tractorwhich delivered on both counts.

Its regular models, too, are feature-r ich andserve specific farming needs.The new SarpanchDLX t ractor, for example, comes with a side-shift gear, ergonomically designed workspace,multi-disc oil-immersed brakes (OIB) forpowerful braking and Hy-TEC hydraulics withquick-lift and a coupler for high-precisionfarming.

The Bhoomiputra range which has come infor special praise from farmers across thecountry offers exceptional fuel efficiency.

Arjun Ult ra-1, the flagship brand, stands forstyle and technology and demonstrates itssuperlative performance in agricultural andconstruction equipment (CE)operations.

It's most recentlaunch has beenthe MahindraShaan. India's first25HP multi-utility tractorwith built-introlley,Shaanwas launched in2007 and hasproved very

effective in thebrick kilnsegment.

Over the years,Mahindra Tractor s haswon several accolades for quality,workmanship and after-sales service. Butthe most enduring has been the very specialsobriquet for its outstanding fuel efficiency:Mileage Ka Master.

Recent DevelopmentsThe chequered performance of the world'sindustry impacted by the global meltdown hasleft Mahindra Tractors pretty much unscathed.The brand continued to expand its presenceacross world markets and is now selling in all sixcontinents.Africa emerged as one of its largest

export destinations.Despite a stagnant farming sector Mahindra

China Tractor Company, the brand's first jointventure in China registered a growth of 21% inthe 2009 financial year (Source: company data).This was made possibleon the back of thelaunch of the Mahindrabranded red tractors andthe extension of itsproduct range to includetractors up to 40HP.

In the same year,Mahindra Tractors soughtto strengthen itspresence in China byinking another jointventure. Mahindra Yueda(Yancheng) TractorCompany, a new entit y incollaboration with theJiangsu Yueda Group. Itwill market its productunder the Jinma brand.Jinma's product por tfolioincludes tractors rangingfrom 16HP to 125HP.

In the US, MahindraUSA has wonexceptional praise. In asurvey conducted byNor th AmericanEquipment DealersAssociation it was ratedhighest in overall

satisfaction amongdealers in this complex

and highly competit ive market. Recently,Mahindra USA joined Macdonald Motorspor tsto help their NASCAR team notch up theirfirst victory.

PromotionThe very fact that promotions for tractors areundertaken in rural markets imbues it with itsown set of challenges. Not least of all is the factof a fragmented audience, poor reach,languagebarriers, limited access to rural communities andliteracy concerns.To neutralise these,Mahindra

Tractors expends up to 40% of itsbudget on what it terms as personalisedspecific communications.This includesthematic vans and two-wheelers carr yingproduct-specific,brand-specific andapplication-specific messages.

In addition itsupplements thiseffort with severalbelow-the-lineinitiatives eachdesigned tostrengthen its brandsaliency and buildbonds with the

farming community.Amongst the

company's outreachprogrammes arethe Mahindra Tractor

Mahotsav, wherethe brand

showcases its complete range ofproducts and services; Mahindra

Jashn Josh Ka, a public felicitationceremony of loyal customers and MahindraKhiladi No.1, which promotes local sports talent.

Mahindra also melds its customer centricitywith social concerns through initiatives likeSwasth Tractor Swasth Chalak (healthy tractor,healthy operator) wherein Mahindra medicalcamps across the nation address the healthconcerns of farmers.In 2009, the companyconducted 2797 camps across the countrybenefiting over 85,000 people who availed of

free medical check up facilities.In addition, thecompany operates mobile medical camps underthe Mahindra Lifeline Express programme.Thisproject won the Auto Monitor's CorporateSocial Responsibility award in 2008.

Another initiative, VijayeeVidarbha, helps train siblingsof debt-ridden farmers ofthe Vidarbha region ofMaharashtra in maintainingand repairing tractor s. In thisway they are empoweredand can hope to live a life ofdignity.To date 140 childrenhave benefited.

Mahindra Samriddhi is aninitiative to help increaseagricultural productivitythrough the use of innovativefarming technologies.Mahindra Samriddhicentresdisseminate knowledge onmodern agri practices alongwith testing local soil,analysing climate conditionsand suggesting croppingpatterns, agri clinics anddemo farms.

Brand ValuesAgriculture is the backboneof the Indian economy.W hileit contributes less than 15%to the country's grossdomestic product it provides

employment to nearly 70%of rural India. It is in this

critical area that Mahindra Tractors discharges

an important function.Over the years, Mahindra Tractors has provenitself to be a dependable partner in theprogress of the farmer who has appreciated itsaesthetically att ractive, technically modern anduser-friendly product features.Hence, it is easyto understand why Mahindra Tractors is such atrusted brand even in the furthest corners ofthe country.

www.mahindratractorworld.comwww.mahindrakisanmit ra.com

133SUPERBRANDS

One out of every three tractors in India is aMahindra tractor

In 2007,Mahindra Tractors became the onlytractor company in the world to have won theJapan Quality Medal universally acclaimed asthe highest order in Total Quality Management(TQM) practices

Mahindra Tractors' plant in Kandivli, Mumbai isthe only tractor manufacturing facility in India tohave a fully air-conditioned robotic plant

Mahindra Shaan was felicitated with theAmerican Society for Agricultural & BiologicalEngineers award for being one of 50Outstanding Innovations of the Year.The brandwas chosen from more than 1500 entriesreceived from across the world

Mahindra Tractors are sold in all six continents

Mahindra Shikshak Divas, an initiative to bondwith the rural next generation,reaches out to550,000 students and more than 11,000

teachers across fifteen states

Things you didnt know about

Mahindra Tractors