He is not the loudest man in the room. Nor is he given to grandstanding. But when the dust settles, the job is done—and done well. That, in many ways, captures Anish Shah, managing director and Group CEO of Mahindra & Mahindra: a leader who was handed a rare carte blanche to transform a storied conglomerate, and who has done so without diluting its core character.
When Shah took over in April 2021, M&M was something of a “bruised blue chip”
A few missteps had left the automotive business struggling amid intense competition. In less than five years, Shah has turned the business into one of corporate India’s standout turnaround stories—a case study in what ruthless focus and disciplined execution can deliver. Since taking charge in April 2021, he has repeatedly stressed one simple idea: management bandwidth is finite.
Spread it too thin, and both profits and priorities suffer. Capital, time and attention, Shah believes, must flow to where returns justify them. Working in his understated style, Shah has steadily energised the organisation, pruning where needed and backing winners decisively. Nowhere is this more visible than in the automotive business. And 2025 has been a defining year.
In February, Mahindra overtook Hyundai to become India’s second-largest carmaker—no small feat in one of the world’s most competitive passenger vehicle markets.
By leaning hard into its natural strength in sports utility vehicles, the company displaced a deeply entrenched rival. SUVs have always been Mahindra’s soul. What changed under Shah was the precision with which that advantage was executed.
The numbers tell the story. Mahindra has now led the SUV segment for two consecutive years, adding 390 basis points of revenue share year-on-year in the September quarter. Already. SUVs account for a big chunk of the company’s revenues; a few years ago, this share was much smaller. Popularity is part of it. Pricing power is the other.
Being on the right side of a megatrend helps, but that cannot be enough. Success in SUVs is not just about lineage—it is about designing the right models, offering the right variants, hitting the right price points and delivering within acceptable waiting periods. If Mahindra is expected to sell close to 650,000 passenger vehicles this year, up from around 240,000 units in FY22, it is because Shah and his team have mastered the choreography.
The IIM Ahmedabad alumnus—who had two stints with GE Capital for a total of 14 years across countries—started his professional career with Citibank, before working with Bain & Company. Shah, who has a PhD in Management from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, also had a stint with Bank of America.
Inside the company, Shah is often described as a “nuts-and-bolts” leader
Shah is known to be obsessive about execution and intolerant of bottlenecks. The smoother production flows and sharply reduced waiting periods bear his stamp. Not long ago, bookings for some Mahindra models far outstripped production capacity, threatening to test customer patience. Shah moved quickly. Manufacturing capacity was quadrupled in a short span, a fix that required coordination across suppliers, plants and logistics. The company’s push into electric vehicles, too, is shaping up steadily rather than theatrically.
The market has taken notice. Mahindra’s market capitalisation has surged from just under Rs 1 lakh crore in March 2021 to about Rs 4.5 lakh crore today. In 2025—a year when broader equity markets have struggled—the stock is up about 20%.
More tellingly, Mahindra now trades at a higher price-to-earnings multiple than Maruti Suzuki on FY27 estimates. That premium reflects investor faith in Shah’s capital discipline and his ability to deliver on the group’s ambitious “5–14X” growth targets across businesses.
Near-term plans include an eight-fold expansion in SUVs and light commercial vehicles over FY20–30, implying a compound annual revenue growth of 20% over FY26–30. The Street is also betting that Shah will unlock value in key subsidiaries, including financial services and technology—an optimism evident in near-universal brokerage buy calls and widespread institutional ownership.
Shah encourages big thinking—but anchors it in numbers. He talks not in percentage points but in multiples. “If you don’t think big enough, you don’t get there,” he says. The ambition is unapologetically bold: to become the fastest-growing SUV brand globally and to rank among the world’s 50 most admired companies.
As he turns 56 today (December 26), Shah has much to celebrate. In a remarkably short span, he has pulled Mahindra out of a strategic rut, exited virtually all loss-making businesses, cleaned up the balance sheet and delivered a debt-free group ready for its next leap.
Fittingly, Anish—which can mean supreme, ultimate or unrivalled—now leads a Mahindra that, in its own way, feels closer than ever to living up to the name.
