November 8, 2018, Johannesburg: Mahindra crowned its Tekfest Champions at its national competition in Gauteng on 24 October 2018.

Tekfest is Mahindra’s global competition for technical personnel and service advisors. It combines various rounds of online and in-person evaluations to select South Africa’s best technical specialists.

For the South African round of the competition, Mahindra sifted through all its technical personnel with various online evaluation modules. The top performers in these online tests were invited to compete at a regional level, with the best of the best competing in theoretical and practical tests at the National Training and Development Centre at the end of October.

“The standard of competition at all levels was very high, so it is a singular achievement to make it to the national Tekfest championship,” says Pratyush Bose, Head of After Sales for Mahindra South Africa.

Technicians from all over the country competed in 18 different categories in three different specialist fields – technicians, diagnostic technicians and service advisors.

Etienne Cockrel of Mahindra Welkom won the Tekfest Technicians Championship, with Donovan Harmse from Mahindra Lydenburg coming a close second.

In the category for Tekfest Service Advisors, Jeremy King from Mahindra Burgersdorp won the Championship, followed by Graham Moore (Mahindra Kimberley) and Elize Janse van Rensburg from Mahindra Bloemfontein.

Of the Tekfest Diagnostic (cotek) Technicians, Etienne Jacobs of Mahindra Nelspruit took home the grand prize, followed by Auryn Nicholas of Mahindra Brits and Hein Nel of Mahindra Bloemfontein.

“It is very heartening to see technicians and service advisors from so many different dealerships compete at the national championship,” says Rajesh Gupta, CEO of Mahindra South Africa. “It is testament to the high standard of the technical staff throughout our network of more than 60 dealers.”

Gupta explains that Mahindra is investing heavily in its local technical capacity to support its local assembly facility in KwaZulu-Natal.

“Our local assembly facility in the Dube TradePort outside Durban has given us the mandate to invest even more in our technical skills. Over time, we will see South Africa becoming a very large regional hub for Mahindra and we will support the technical needs of this expanding local production from South Africa.”

It is with this goal in mind that Mahindra will send its top Tekfest Champions to compete with Mahindra technicians from other countries in the regional championship for the African continent. The best performing technical specialists in these rounds will be invited to compete in the global competition to be hosted in India.