MFCS plans to open over 50 workshops by end of March 2014

Mahindra First Choice Services (MFCS), a multi-brand car workshop company is planning open over 50 workshops by end of March 2014 and over 450 workshops in the next five years. The company has opened its second in Pune with 'Insta Serve' facility which has 16 bays and a monthly capacity of servicing 1000 plus cars.

Commenting on this, Rajeev Dubey President (Group HR, Corporate Services & After-Market) & Member of the Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd said, "With increasing number of cars, people are looking for quality servicing for their cars. There is a huge space lined vaccant in car servicing sector and we are trying to fill the gap. We are focusing on teir-I and tier-II cities for our expansion. Aslo, we will open over 50 service stations, in which 30 will be company owned and 20 will be on franchise basis.

He added, We are expanding our Mahindra First Choice Wheels service network to tap the growing buying and selling of passenger car business which will double in less than five years. The second hand car market is growing and at preset it is 1.2 times higher than the 2.7 million passenger vehicle market at present."

A typical investment for one service station is around Rs 30 lakh and break even time is around one year. The bay size of each station varies from 8 to 15 bays. Currently, the service stations receive one lakh repair orders and expected to grow up to three lakh in the next one year.

Also, speaking about its multi brand pre owned car business under the same brand Dubey said, " The business of pre owned is growing rapidly at the rate of 16 per cent and it OEM owned multi brand outlets contribute over 15 per cent. The total car used car market of India is of 2.8 million. Also, the holding time for new car has came down but second hand car market is still dominated by customer to customer selling. Mahindra First Choise has sold over 46000 vehicles in last one year and around 35000 units via online.

Mahindra First Choice Services (MFCS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd is a chain of multi brand car workshops across major cities in India like Bangalore, Nashik, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Vapi, Nellore, Coimbatore and Chennai.