SsangYong needs to find a new family to join, after being abandoned by its owners for the third time in two decades.
“SsangYong needs a new investor. We are working with the company to see if we can secure investment,” Pawan Goenka, Mahindra’s managing director, told news outlets including Reuters.
Anish Shah, Mahindra’s deputy managing director said, “If a new investor comes on board, that automatically takes our stake down, or they may even buy our stake”.
The Indian automaker has not indicated if there are any interested suitors.
Mahindra entered the red last year, recoding a loss of ₹19.55 billion ($370 million). The company is currently reviewing all of its loss-making businesses.
Due to the lockdowns brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, Ford and Mahindra have delayed the start of their joint venture company focussed on the Indian market.
The writing has been on the wall since April when Mahindra confirmed it was going to stop on-going funding for SsangYong.
Mahindra blamed the coronavirus pandemic and said it “will not be able to inject any fresh equity” into Ssangyong, urging it to “find alternate sources of funding”.
It did, however, give the Korean automaker ₩40 billion ($47 million) to help it through the next few months.
Mahindra currently has a 75 per cent stake in SsangYong, which it acquired in 2010, a year after Chinese automaker SAIC put the Korean marque into receivership during the height of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
