When I walked onto the stage at the 26th Annual CIO&Leader Conference, I carried a clear message: AI isn’t just another technology wave, it’s a strategic inflection point.
The global auto industry is at a moment where AI is as critical as the assembly line once was. At Mahindra, one of India’s most diversified conglomerates, AI is already moving from boardroom buzz to factory floors, dealerships, and even holiday resorts. Doing AI on the side is not scalable. That is why we created Mahindra.ai, to put artificial intelligence at the heart of our future.
As a group with interests in automobiles, farm equipment, finance, IT, hospitality, energy, and logistics, we institutionalized AI through a dedicated entity, Mahindra.ai. We aim to make AI a strategic lever across every business, from the shop floor to the boardroom, while ensuring governance, ethics, and responsibility remain at the core.
Building, Not Buying AI
At the heart of this strategy is my conviction that AI must be developed, not merely acquired. The real value lies in combining AI with enterprise data, rather than public datasets available to everyone. To achieve this, we are focused on building reusable AI assets, nurturing future-ready talent, reducing adoption barriers across functions, and centralizing governance so that AI is always deployed ethically, securely, and responsibly.
Reinventing Manufacturing
AI is already creating a measurable impact in our automotive business. Manufacturing has been redefined by four pillars: Energy.AI for reducing energy per vehicle, Agility.AI for dynamically adapting to supply and demand shocks, Uptime.AI for proactive maintenance, and Quality.AI for computer vision–based quality checks.
Transforming Customer Experiences
Customer-facing processes are also being reshaped. Our WhatsApp-based AI bots for the XUV700 guide buyers through features, test drives, and dealer visits, something a call center agent would struggle to deliver seamlessly. Generative AI is enabling personalized engagement, such as customer selfies transformed into branded vehicle images. Sales consultants now rely on automatic conversation summaries that help them recall customer interactions instantly.
Vehicle manuals have been reimagined as conversational “vehicle GPTs” embedded in apps, while service technicians use AI copilots for step-by-step repair guidance in their preferred language. Even vehicle inspections have gone digital, with AI-powered cameras detecting dents and scratches more accurately, improving trust and unlocking new revenue opportunities for dealers.
Beyond Automobiles
Our AI story extends well beyond cars. Mahindra Finance has integrated AI-powered bots into its app to serve rural customers across multiple Indian languages, already engaging more than 100,000 users. At Mahindra Holidays resorts, AI-enabled facial recognition technology enables seamless pre-check-ins, allowing guests to bypass paperwork and proceed directly to their rooms.
Empowering Employees With GenAI
Internally, we have democratized AI for employees through a secure “model garden” sandbox, which provides access to models such as Gemini, GPT, and LLaMA. This ensures that everyone, from factory operators to CXOs, can leverage GenAI safely with enterprise data while remaining compliant with security norms.
Governance at the Core
Governance remains central to our approach. We define our AI principles around being ethical, responsible, and secure. This translates into clear boundaries: for instance, humans always handle roadside assistance calls, while bots handle routine dealership queries. For us, responsible deployment is as important as innovation itself.
Lessons from the Journey
Reflecting on our AI journey, I see five key lessons. AI is a build-first journey, not a plug-and-play purchase. It is expensive, requiring investments in talent, compute, and integration, making prioritization critical. It is inherently cross-functional, demanding collaboration between IT, business, and risk leaders. It cannot be treated as just another project but must be embedded into the company’s strategic fabric. And above all, it must show ROI, whether in customer experience, topline growth, or operational efficiency.
The Road Ahead
For us at Mahindra, AI is not a buzzword. It is a future-defining capability already delivering tangible results. The real unlock of AI will not come from public data but from harnessing enterprise data to serve customers better and transform processes from within.