Even before its release, the film 'Gangs of Wasseypur' has proven to be a good omen for its director Anurag Kashyap. He tweeted on 15th June, "So got my first Vehicle, a Mahindra XUV, superb and 100 percent Indian. Proud of it." This was followed by another tweet from him, saying, "It's taken 20 years to be able to buy my first vehicle, had to be an Indian brand." The director had to miss the pre-release press interaction in Nagpur as he caught an ENT infection in Lucknow. However, the excitement about the new car will surely compensate for the disappointment.
The Bollywood director has certainly picked an excellent vehicle as his first car. The car has been received warmly from all quarters and is heavily demanded across the country. Recently, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) opened the first nationwide bookings of its XUV 500 on June 8, 2012. Since then, the Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) has been made available across the nation, including the 19 cities where it was launched earlier. The car attracted more than 400 orders within just a week of the opening of bookings and has a huge demand in India.
Second phase of booking witnessed over 25,000 orders and Mahindra had to employ a lucky draw, where 7,200 lucky owners of the new flagship were selected. Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Automotive Division, M&M, Pravin Shah, said, “It has been an incredible journey so far for the XUV 500 and we are pleased to take the product national. We have been inundated with requests for re-opening of bookings not just from existing cities but also from cities where the XUV 500 was not available. Now that we have ramped-up our production capacity significantly, we are confident that we will be able to take care of the growing all-India demand for the XUV 500.”
Initially, the heavily anticipated SUV was launched by the car maker only in selected cities and even then the demand exceeded supply by a huge margin. Now, Mahindra has increased the production capacity of the XUV 500 so that it can meet the demand for the vehicle. Shah said, "We have been gradually increasing the production of XUV 500. It has touched 4,000 units a month now and the next step is to take it to 5,000 units by September-October." Much before plans, the company raised the monthly production of the vehicle to 5,000 units in June 2012.
