Mahindra sales in Australia revealed, eyeing Top 15 spot by 2030

Mahindra has set its sights on placing among Australia's Top 15 best-selling car makers by the end of the decade, after finishing 32nd – behind the likes of Renault and Porsche – last financial year.

The scale of the Indian car maker in Australia has long been a mystery, as it does not submit sales data to the industry-standard VFACTS reports collated monthly by the peak body for new-car makers, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI).

That is until now, as executives for Mahindra confirmed to Australian media this week the company sold 4185 examples of its SUVs, 4WDs and utes during the most recent Indian financial year, from April 2024 to March 2025.

It places Mahindra 32nd on the sales charts, behind the likes of Chevrolet (4221), Mini (4553), Skoda (4562), Mercedes-Benz Vans (4970), KGM (5139) and Renault (5261) over the same period.

The Indian brand remains a long way from the top, however, as Toyota reported 242,855 new-vehicle sales over that period, and even rising Chinese brand Chery shifted 16,747 in that time.

Mahindra will mark 20 years in the Australian market this year, but has predominantly sold commercial vehicles in rural areas, alongside its tractor business.

It currently has two SUVs in its line-up, the medium-sized XUV700, which launched in its current guise 2023, and the city-sized XUV 3XO, which went on sale this week.

Any stock that was imported before that date can continue to be sold.

In a similar vein, the Pik-Up workhorse ute is now out of showrooms until the new model launches sometime in 2026, because it does not meet side-impact crash protection rules brought in for light-commercial vehicles in November 2022.

The model continued to be sold until February this year because the car maker had so much stock already imported.

At the launch of the XUV 3XO in Victoria this week, the brand revealed it had sold 4185 cars in the last Indian financial year, seven times the number it shifted in the 2022 financial year.

Mahindra Pik-Up.

Mahindra Head of International Operations, Sachin Arolkar, told media the brand hopes the 3XO will become its best seller, and ahead of the 2030 target, it has a goal to lead the new model's 'light SUV' category, currently led by the Mazda CX-3 on 8221 deliveries so far in 2025.

“It is far away, 2030 – it is not what we're talking about now, today or tomorrow. We have the confidence that we are on the right track for getting into the top five in the segments we are in,” said Arolkar.

“Being top in light SUVs is a step in the direction of being in the Top 15 [best-selling brands overall]. While being in the Top 15 is a 2030 target, being in the Top Five [in each category] is more of a short-term target.”

“We have set an ambitious goal for ourselves … and we clearly believe that we have the right formula to win as a manufacturer playing in the Australian market.

“Australia is one of the biggest SUV markets, and Mahindra as a brand is very strong here too. There's a lot of product validation that happens in Australia, and for us, it is a very, very strategic market.

“Apart from that, we have seen that there is a strong tailwind towards the growth of the emerging brands in this country. Consumers are ready to embrace newer brands that bring value on the table for the Aussie consumer.”

While the brand acknowledges it has a lot of work to do to reach its 2030 target – referring to itself as a “20-year-old start-up” – it said it has grown its business in transitioning from a rural-oriented brand focusing on affordable utes, to a metropolitan one.

“In 2021 we made some fundamental changes in our strategy,” Neha Anand, Vice President and Head of the XUV brand for International Marketing, told media, including Drive.

Mahindra XUV700.

“When you think of Mahindra four years back, [you think] strong, reliable, rural, rugged – not such a bad positioning.

“I think we were in a good space, but we wanted to move a notch higher to really deliver to the customer's needs and requirements. And so today, where are we? [We’re] tech-savvy, sophisticated, reliable, young, head-turning, youthful.”

Globally, Mahindra has 260,000 employees and 69 manufacturing plants spread across multiple continents.

It now operates 70 dealers in Australia, with plans to add another 10 in the next five months following “a sea change” in its sales, and increased presence by partnering with some of the country’s larger dealer groups.

It also operates a parts warehouse, which it claims “has got all the spare parts readily available for our product lines very much in the country.”

Arolkar told Drive that Mahindra's goal is not just to compete with the influx of Chinese brands now entering the Australian market.

“I don't want to get into a comparison with the legacy brands or the Japanese, Koreans, Europeans or the Chinese. We plan to call out our own nation going in a far more calibrated way, building on our 20-year heritage,” he told us.

A born-and-bred newshound, Kathryn has worked her way up through the ranks reporting for, and later editing, two renowned UK regional newspapers and websites, before moving on to join the digital newsdesk of one of the world’s most popular newspapers – The Sun. More recently, she’s done a short stint in PR in the not-for-profit sector, and led the news team at Wheels Media.

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