Sport-utility vehicle (SUV) buyers in India are looking for differentiated body styles with high ground clearance as more and more cars get look-alike boxy designs, according to Mahindra & Mahindra’s Pratap Bose.

“A lot of the times, Mahindra kept getting requests to bring coupé. We just didn’t feel that the time was right. We also felt that the SUV customer is a little more conservative in terms of shape choice like SUV has to be boxy. What we realised is that the customer is changing because now the SUV world has started to get very similar. Now, they are saying is that we want differentiation,” Bose, chief design and creative officer of Auto & Farm sectors at Mahindra & Mahindra, tells Fortune India in an interview.

Mahindra unveiled two brand names for its new “electric origin” vehicles—BE and XEV. While BE focuses on sportier cars, XEV will house bigger premium SUVs.

M&M’s Bose says the carmaker is eyeing a new customer base with its BE range of electric vehicles. “There are some car buyers who are not Mahindra customers at all, forget EVs. They don’t walk into our showrooms. In order to attract new customers to increase our market share, you also have to appeal to another kind of customer and that’s who we’ve launched BE for. Therefore, BE is even more radical in that sense,” he says.

“By launching these two cars we are trying to capture new customers through BE 6 and bringing more Mahindra customers into the electric world with the XEV 9e,” Bose adds.

SUVs have upended India’s automobile market accounting for nearly two-thirds of total sales in the first half of the ongoing financial year. Sales of sedans and hatchbacks have shrunk as customers trade in their old cars for SUVs with higher ground clearance, ideal to manoeuvre the country’s pot-holed roads.

“What sedans don’t have especially for India is the sort of ground clearance and visual feeling that you can go anywhere, you can tackle any of our roads,” says Bose. Mahindra’s BE 6, which is priced starting from ₹18.9 lakh (ex-showroom), comes with an air duct on its bonnet, which Bose says aids in aerodynamics.

Mahindra’s new EVs come at a time when India’s largest electric carmaker, Tata Motors is seeing a slowdown in electric car sales. Tata’s market share in EVs fell below 50% in November 2024, down from nearly 75% in fiscal 2023-24. JSW MG Motor India saw its EV market share increase to 36.45% last month after it launched MG Windsor with a battery as-a-service offering. With the XUV400, M&M currently corners the third-largest market share in EVs after Tata Motors and JSW MG Motor India.

M&M was India's first large automaker to bet big on EVs when it acquired a controlling stake in Bengaluru-based Reva Electric in 2010 and launched two-door Mahindra e2o in 2013 and four-door electric hatch e2oPlus in 2016. It also rolled out India's first electric sedan, eVerito, in 2016. While most of these cars were discontinued because of poor demand, M&M is now betting big on its two new “born electric” EVs by setting up a production capacity of 90,000 units annually. Rajesh Jejurikar, executive director and CEO (Auto and Farm Sector), M&M, says the BE 6 will bring in a new customer base who hasn’t considered a Mahindra before. “People do want differentiated products and many niche products become mainstream,” he says.