When Bhuwan Lodha, CEO of Mahindra’s AI Division, walked onto the stage, he carried a clear message: AI isn’t just another technology wave, it’s a strategic inflection point.
The global auto industry is at an inflection point 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,” said Bhuwan Lodha, Head of AI at Mahindra Group, underscoring why the company created Mahindra.ai to put artificial intelligence at the heart of its future.
This huge conglomerate, with interests in automobiles, farm equipment, finance, IT, hospitality, energy, and logistics, has institutionalized AI through a dedicated entity, Mahindra.ai. The aim is 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 the belief that AI must be built, not merely bought. Lodha emphasized that the actual value lies in combining AI with enterprise data, rather than public datasets available to everyone. To achieve this, Mahindra has focused on building reusable AI assets, nurturing future-ready talent, reducing adoption barriers across various functions, and centralizing governance to ensure that AI is always deployed ethically, securely, and responsibly.
Reinventing Manufacturing
Lodha showcased how AI is already creating a measurable impact within Mahindra’s automotive arm. 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. Mahindra’s 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 being used to create personalized engagement, such as customer selfies transformed into branded vehicle images. At the same time, 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, and service technicians use AI copilots to get 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
The AI story extends beyond cars. Mahindra Finance has integrated AI-powered bots into its app to cater to rural customers across multiple Indian languages, with over 100,000 users already engaged. 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, Mahindra has democratized AI for employees through a secure “model garden” sandbox, which provides access to Gemini, GPT, LLaMA, and other models. This ensures everyone, from factory operators to CXOs, can leverage GenAI safely with enterprise data while staying compliant with security norms.
Governance at the Core
Governance remains a critical focus. Mahindra defines its 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. Lodha underscored that responsible deployment is as important as innovation itself.
Lessons from the Journey
Reflecting on Mahindra’s AI journey, Lodha highlighted five 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 Mahindra, AI is not a buzzword. It is a future-defining capability already delivering tangible results. As Lodha summed up: the actual unlock of AI will come not from public data, but from harnessing enterprise data to serve customers better and transform processes from within.