Mahindra & Mahindra

Available for over a year

Peter Day talks to Anand Mahindra, the CEO and Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra, or M&M, one of India’s largest "federations" of companies, whose products range from utility vehicles and tractors, to financial services and real estate. M&M's history closely mirrors that of modern India. Started as the country was about to become independent, it lost one of its co-founders to partition. After initially thriving in the post-independence rush, it then languished in the doldrums during the "Licence Raj", when India's economy was closed and run by the state. And when the economy was liberalised in the early 1990s, M&M started growing again in a big way, thanks in no small part to Anand Mahindra’s know-how, picked up at Harvard business school. Peter Day also visits M&M's state-of-the-art cars and trucks factory, and visits M&M's annual Mumbai blues festival.