During the Global Investors Meet 2024, industrialist Anand Mahindra said Tamil Nadu was not the choice when Ford started its operations in India in a joint venture with the Mahindra Group. “We were looking for locations in the north. It was the Ford team that told us, ‘Tamil Nadu is the place to be’.
And the Ford experience helped me make a personal decision to set up the Mahindra Research Valley here,” the Mahindra Group chairman recalled. And there the seeds were sown for the 1,550-acre Mahindra World City (MWC) in Chennai, India’s first integrated business city and corporate India’s first operating Special Economic Zone (SEZ). And this place also includes a multi-sector Special Economic Zone and a Domestic Tariff Area (DTA).
“Currently, over 65 transnational companies — including BMW, Infosys, Mahindra Research Valley, Fujitec, Pegatron, TSMT, BASF, NTN Bearing, Lear Automotive, TVS Group of companies, and Force Motors — have opened their facilities in the MWC,” says Rajaram Pai, Chief Business Officer, Industrial, Mahindra Lifespace Developers Limited. As of the third quarter of the financial year 2024, MWC has facilitated cumulative SEZ exports worth ₹132,871 crore and generated jobs for over 61,000 persons. MoU signed So, how did the MWC come up? According to Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO), ideation began in 1996.
An MoU was signed between Mahindra and TIDCO. The initial aim was to develop a park for auto ancillary parts unit.
