Pininfarina to play a role in Tech Mahindra's $1 billion dream

MUMBAI: Pininfarina, the Italian design and engineering house part-owned by Tech Mahindra, is expecting to play a key part in the Indian parent's target to gross $1 billion from the business that it is part of.
Both companies have started sharing customer profiles and are reaching out to the prospective clients jointly. Pininfarina, which has done design work for iconic brands such as Ferrari, Maserati and Rolls-Royce, brings its hardware, finesse and engineering expertise to the table, while Tech Mahindra's contribution is in the IT part of engineering.

The entry of Tech Mahindra, which bought a controlling stake in Pininfarina in late 2015, has not only given the Italian firm much needed financial stability, but also opened up access to some 800 customers of the Indian firm.

In return, Pininfarina's legendary brand status has allowed Tech Mahindra access to relationships the iconic designer has nurtured with the best in the world over its 85-year history, including with Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Peugeot.

In a recent interview to ET, Pininfarina chief executive Silvio Pietro Angori said both Pininfarina and Tech Mahindra have worked together in the past, even before the 2015 acquisition, and that both businesses were perfectly complementary. The company has a big appetite to grow, he added.

"We have a billion-dollar dream, it is a dream that can be conceived and imagined only with Tech Mahindra," he said. "Imagine this, Tech Mahindra has 800 clients, we have 160. If 10% of Tech Mahindra's clients become ours, we will add 80 customers to our portfolio. If 20% of our customers becomes Tech Mahindra clients, they are adding more business. See how we draw the top line," Angori said.

Pininfarina and Tech Mahindra together make $450-500 million a year from their design and engineering business and doubling it in five years is not an ambitious target, said Angori.

In 2015, the year the company was sold to Tech Mahindra, Pininfarina generated a turnover of $82 million, with 55% of it coming from engineering and design services and the balance from branding and heritage. The numbers for 2016 weren't available.

The company has a small set-up with capacity of doing two cars a week. Of the 550 people it employs, 400 are working on engineering products and the rest is in the design section.

It is working on several dozen projects and almost 80% of these are on electric and hybrid products. The CEO said Tech Mahindra will help Pininfarina bridge a very critical gap on delivering autonomous solution for the future, and also provide solution for shared mobility.

"Pininfarina knows how to build the brand, not just for the product, but also for the experience of our customers. From the technological standpoint, we will do all the engineering that is required, but nowadays the needs of the customers go beyond that. The IT work that is needed to translate into experience will be taken care of by Tech Mahindra," he said.

While Pininfarina is known to have designed some of the most exclusive cars in the world, a significant part of its revenue is generated from the mass-market.

While Angori was mum on the association with Mahindra & Mahindra, the parent of Tech Mahindra has already tapped into the design expertise of the Italian firm for its TUV 300 and is considering using the Pininfarina brand for luxury electric cars.