After apartments now you can book and buy a car online from a popular website.
With the youth preferring to purchase products and service through the online medium, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd has entered into an exclusive arrangement with Flipkart for online booking of Mahindra KUV100, a compact SUV which was unveiled at Chakan in Pune on Friday.
This is a first of its kind initiative in the automobile industry.
The online bookings for the compact SUV will be open from mid-night of January 18th, 2016.
On Friday while unveiling the smallest SUV vehicle from the Mahindra stable, Pawan Goenka, Executive Director, Mahindra & Mahindra had stated that the company apart from its dealership model would depend on ecommece to sell this product and would tie up with Flipkart and Car & Bike portal for online booking as the youth is the main target for KUV100.
Announcing the tie-up Anil Goteti, Vice President - Business, Flipkart in a statement said, "Online today is a must have strategy for all players to respond to the growing demand of their customers who are spread across different cities and towns in the country."
"First time in the automobile category, this exclusive tie-up will allow Mahindra access Flipkart’s extensive reach and network to connect with their customers and provide them the ease to book Mahindra KUV100 online," he added.
Last month Flipkart had introduced Automobiles as a category with an objective to change the way vehicles are purchased in India.
As part of this tie up both Flipkart and Mahindra have assured in-a-month delivery to customers.
KUV100 (pronounced as KUV '1 double Oh'), Mahindra's first entry into the volumes segment has been developed to create an entirely new category in the Indian passenger car industry.
Speaking on the association with Flipkart, Veejay Ram Nakra, Senior Vice President, Sales & Customer Care, Automotive Division, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. said, " Being two young brands, both KUV100 and Flipkart complement each other. This tie-up with Flipkart further reinforces our customer centric initiatives."
"With the ever increasing population of internet users, this was a step in the right direction for us, especially for brand KUV100 that targets the young and trendy. I am sure that this association will be mutually beneficial for both the companies," he added
Designed in-house and engineered at the Mahindra Research Valley at Chennai, KUV100 is powered by mFALCON, an all-new engine family with options of both petrol (mFALCON, G80) and diesel (mFALCON, D75). The mFALCON is a compact lightweight engine built to deliver peppy and high performance.
This is the first time that Mahindra has developed a petrol engine on its own. KUV100 will compete with Maruti's Swift and DZire and Hyundai's i10 Grand.
The vehicle is tageted at the youth and first time car buyers.
An indigenously developed monocoque SUV, the KUV100 will have many firsts to its credit including the first ground up petrol engine offering from Mahindra. This vehicle will also be exported to Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and at a later stage to Africa.
The company has invested Rs 1200 crore to develop this vehicle including the engine and transmission. It took four years to develop this vehicle from concept and design.
The base model of the petrol KUV100 is priced at Rs 4.42 lakh (EX showroom Pune) while the top end is priced at Rs 5.91 lakh ( EX showroom Pune).
The diesel base model is priced at Rs 5.22 lakh while the top end diesel is priced at Rs 6.76 lakh (EX showroom Pune).
With KUV100, Mahindras are entering an unchartered territory dominated by Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai. And if successful this could be another inflection point for the company after the Scorpio in 2002 and XUV500 in 2011.
