M&M managing director Anand Mahindra (left) with Bharat Doshi, director (corporate affairs), in Mumbai on Monday. (Fotocorp)

Mumbai, May 28: Mahindra & Mahindra is planning to invest around Rs 1,200 crore in two new platforms. These are an upmarket sports utility vehicle project and a cargo and passenger vehicle unit. These two projects are in addition to its multipurpose vehicle project, Ingenio.

These three platforms are expected to give the Rs 11,558-crore M&M a strong presence in the domestic automobile industry, which is expected to grow by 8-12 per cent this year.

M&M had already announced the setting up of a Rs 550-crore Ingenio project at its Nashik plant in Maharashtra. The unit is expected to begin production by 2008.

According to Pawan Goenka, president, automotive sector, M&M, investments in the two platforms are expected to be at around Rs 500-600 crore each.

Goenka said while the cargo and passenger vehicle project will be housed at M&M’s Pune plant, the SUV unit will be located at the production site in Chennai, which was jointly set up by M&M, Renault and Nissan. The projects, however, will be developed by M&M on its own.

Goenka also said the company had no plans to withdraw the Bolero from the market. Though he refused to reveal the exact time for the launch of these two vehicles, he said the “normal time’’ taken for the complete development of a new platform is little over three years.

It is believed that the mass market cargo vehicle will compete against the ACE of Tata Motors.

M&M is also investing in various production plants in the country. While a part of these funds is from joint venture partners such as Nissan, Renault and International Truck and Engine Corporation, the company is also investing on its own.

The company plans to expand the capacity at its Nashik unit to 150,000 units from 100,000 units. The total investment including that pooled in by its partners is at over Rs 4,500 crore.

Goenka was speaking to the media after M&M declared its fourth quarter results today. Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman and managing director of M&M, said the company was not worried about the possibility of a slowdown in the automobiles and tractors businesses as it has an excellent product portfolio.

M&M posted a 27 per cent drop in net profits at Rs 236 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2007, compared with Rs 321.2 crore in the same period last year. Senior officials said this decline should be seen in the context of profits which came from the sale of its shares in M&M Financial Services Ltd.

Moreover, during the fourth quarter of 2007, there were also certain changes in accounting for expenditure incurred earlier.

M&M added that if these adjustments were not considered, net profit stood at Rs 238.6 crore compared with Rs 175.6 crore, an increase of 36 per cent. Gross revenues for the quarter grew by nearly 21 per cent at Rs 3,176.5 crore. Gross revenues for the whole year increased by around 40 per cent to Rs 19,436.8 crore from Rs 13,908.4 crore in 2005-06.