The Museum of Living History in Mumbai captures the rich legacy of the Mahindra Group and celebrates its philosophy, values and culture. A part of the specially commissioned art pieces and films was a series of short animated films that told inspiring personal and professional RISE stories of the people of Mahindra, for which various artists were roped in to achieve a greater variety in the visual output. We got the luxury of being the first to pick any two films that we would have liked to work on and, obvious enough, one of them had an Antarctica link, while the other one seemed too interesting to let go. This was 2021, and in 2024 we got another opportunity to have fun with two more films. The brief was simple – do what we may with the visual look as long as it was charming, evocative and dynamic.

The films draw out the real life stories of people that have been touched by Mahindra, each with an inspiring story that led them through doubts and hardships only to rise from them and go on to motivate others. Yuvraj tractor, for instance, tells the story of how the team at Mahindra responded to the plight of 80% of the Indian farmers, farmers who only have small land holdings, so small that traditional tractors would be unthinkable on them. It’s this modest piece of land that we used in our illustration for the entire narrative and saw it change from a farm to the drawing table where Yuvraj was born and back to the farm where Yuvraj was tested. The film on Manju tells a powerful story of a person from the Kinnar community who wanted to dream big, and different, and was enabled by Mahindra in her pursuit of learning to drive trucks. Inspired by the Indian truck art the film takes us through her journey, that of discrimination and kindness, that of challenges and jubilation.