Abstract

The Mahindra Group (Mahindra), a federated group of companies based in India, developed a new core purpose to connect with its global stakeholders and to project a singular voice for the various entities under its umbrella. By 2011, Mahindra had become a US $12.5 billion Indian multinational employing over 119,900 across the globe and had operations spanning 18 key industries. Over the years, while the individual companies in Mahindra Group had their own mission statements, the group did not have one. So according to the company, for this it had a core purpose. As Mahindra expanded globally, it was not able to connect its existing core purpose and positioning statement to the global arena and across the businesses that had been developed at the time of Independence of India in 1947. So the top management at Mahindra decided to revisit its core purpose and positioning statement in a bid to unify all its businesses. They launched a new tagline for the group ‘Rise’ in January 2011. As part of the initiative, Mahindra made some changes internally as well as externally to articulate the new core purpose and vision. The challenge Mahindra faced was how to embed the new core purpose and positioning in all the brand touch points in order to enhance its business growth.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Appreciate the importance of the vision, mission, core purpose, and positioning statement.
• Understand the issues and challenges in formulating a new vision, mission, core purpose, and positioning statement.
• Understand the issues and challenges in embedding the new core purpose across the Mahindra Group.
• Debate how the new core purpose will help Mahindra and what it should do to embed the ethos of ‘Rise’ in the organization.

Keywords

Corporate strategy, core purpose, vision, mission, positioning, positioning statement, branding, brand pillars, Implementation, organizational structure, Federation, Conglomerate, globalization, Mahindra, Automotive, going global, rebranding, rise, re-positioning, corporate branding