Review of MLMM’s files with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) shows that Mahindra & Mahindra, the parent company, has invested around Rs900 crore through equity infusions in the business, while other investors, including the India Japan Fund (IJF), International Finance Corp.(IFC), and most recently Lightrock, have invested a total of Rs1,322 billion.
Sameer Abhyankar is a partner at Lightrock and the head of India. He told Mint how Lightrock’s rapid growth has created an opportunity for investors. “MLMM, boosted by three-wheeler electricification and Mahindra brand, distribution financing and scale, is one of leading operators.”
Abhyankar, of Mint, said that Lightrock believes the company’s track record is essential to its investment decision.
Krishna Kumar, Partner and Fund Head – India Japan Fund, NIIF said that the fund views last-mile transportation as an essential part of India’s transition to cleaner transport. Commercial three-wheelers are particularly important as they can be electrified due to their high utilisation, and because electric vehicles offer economic benefits.
The progress of MLMM since the first investment we made in January 2024 confirms that our strategy is to identify high-quality businesses and partner with them on their journeys towards growth. “Our recent follow-on investments further reflect our confidence in the business and its leadership in last-mile mobile,” added he.
The company’s revenue more than doubled, from Rs2,367 in FY24 (in fiscal year 2016) to Rs4,798 in fiscal 2026 (2026), as the sales of three-wheelers and vehicles in both cargo and passenger categories increased. The company also sells internal-combustion-engine vehicles. Bajaj Auto and TVS are among its main competitors, as well as Piaggio, Euler Motors and Bajaj Auto.
The net profit increased by nearly seven times, going from Rs26 crore to Rs185 crore. In FY26 the company sold 136.855 cars, up by 26% over last year. More than 100,000 were electric vehicles.
The profitability, on the other hand, moderated slightly in FY26. The revenue rose from Rs3,783 to Rs4,798 in FY26. However, the net profit dropped from Rs246 to Rs185. This decline occurred in a period when the company increased its product activities, such as the launch of UDO (which it called a product that defines a segment in the L5M EV sector), as well as the refreshment of Zor Grand Range+, and eAlfa Hard Top.
“In the past year, UDO was launched by your company, which is a product that defines the L5M segment. It offers the best in class design, performance, and range. The Company also introduced several product updates, such as Zor Grand Range+, eAlfa Hard Top and eAlfa Hard Top. This strengthened the company’s portfolio and its value proposition for customers, MLMM stated in its FY26 board report, which was filed on July 27.
Mahindra & Mahindra created MLMM (Mahindra & Mahindra Motors) in May 2023 in order to increase its presence on the fast-growing electric three wheeler market. The business was separated from its consolidated operation. According to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association, electric three-wheelers including cargo three wheelers, e rickshaws and electronic autos accounted for 64% of this segment by the end of June.
In 2024, a report on MLMM’s value was Rs 2,041 crore within a year after its founding. In July 2024, the value of its shares was valued at Rs 2,214 crore.
External funding was received early on in the journey of the company. IFC invested Rs600 billion through compulsorily convertible preference shares (CCPS), while IJF made an investment of Rs400 billion through CCPS, in 2023. Since then, both investors converted their shares to equity and together held a 22.2% stake at the end FY26.
India’s EV transformation is led more by three-wheelers than passenger cars. Abhyankar stated that in FY26 the electric penetration of the three-wheeler passenger segment was approximately 33%. This is a significant difference compared to the 4% average for the passenger car market.
Investors are interested in the electric commercial vehicle market, particularly if a brand name is associated with it. This is especially true if a B2C business is being run. Electric vehicles are profitable because of scale. It is therefore easier for the company that has a legacy brand backing it to receive a large cheque and get valued higher. She said that these brands could help newer businesses with their dealer networks and supply ecosystem.
Ayaan Kartik
Ayaan is a Delhi journalist who tracks the rapidly growing world of automobiles, their parts and components. He has five years of experience in journalism, from Inshorts’ short form news to Outlook Business Magazine’s long form. He tries to mix up the story formats at Mint. From longforms, to news, to sharp stories. After completing his studies at Delhi University, he began to develop a passion for writing and reading about our world today. Ayaan enjoys reading about geopolitics, which is affecting various economic sectors. Journalism offers many promises, but Ayaan likes that it lets a journalist explain what’s happening around the globe to the reader. What better industry than the automobiles? Everyone has been exposed to them since they were young and feel a connection with it. Ayaan loves to use geopolitics to inform his stories, whether it’s China’s growing grip on cars or the increasing popularity of EVs. Readers are becoming more demanding about the type of stories that they like.

Vismaya’s debut as an actress, Thudakkam had a strong start in the box office. The Malayalam movie, produced by Mohanlal’s Aashirvad Cinemas has received mixed reviews but is still a hit with the audience. He also made a cameo appearance in the debut film of his daughter. Thudakkam’s four-day gross is expected to place it among the 10 top Mollywood films of 2026.
How Much Did Thudakkam Earn in 4 Days?
Vismaya’s first film has been a big hit at the box-office. In the movie, she plays a master of martial arts and her father Mohanlal is her teacher. Jude Anthony Joseph’s debut film opened with 2.55 crore. This is an impressive number. On its first weekend and Sunday the film collected 3.6 crores and 4.25 crores, respectively. The film’s first-day collections dropped by 37.25 percent on Monday. On day four, the film collected 1.6 crores. This is a drop of 62.5% from day 3. It will be important to keep the momentum going throughout the week. Now, the net income of this film is 12 crores.
Day-Wise Collection Of Thudakkam
Day 1: 2,55 crore
Day 2: 3.6 Crore
Day 3: 4,25 crore
Day 4: 1,6 crore
Total 12 crore
In the Top 10 Mollywood Grossers in 2026
The film’s net total is 12 crores, which puts it less than one crore away from Tovino Tomas’ Pallichattambi. Tovino’s Pallichattambi ended its run in India with a total net of 12,9 crore. Vismaya’s film is expected to surpass Pallichattambi on Tuesday and earn the top 10 spot in the Mollywood highest grossers for 2026.
Check out the top 10 Mollywood grossers (India Net)
Vaazha 2: 129.42 crore
Drishyam 3109.36 crore
Aadu 3: 51.12 crore
Athiradi 36.97 crore
Patriot: 31.6 Crore
Bharathanatyam Mohiniyattam : 25,55 crore
Balan The Boy: 19.07 crore
Chatha Pacha – The Ring of Rowdies : 16 crore
Prakambanam : 15,35 crore
Pallichattambi : 12,29 crore
Thudakkam Box Office Summary
See the breakdown of box office sales for the movie after four days.
India Net Collection : 12 crore
India Gross Collection: 14,16 crore
Budget: Rs. 20 Cr
Budget recovery: 60%
Total Gross Revenue: Overseas Collections of 12.9 Crore
Total Worldwide Collection: 27,06 Crore
Koimoi will continue to bring you more stories like this.
Fauzi Box office: Will Prabhas get December lucky to repeat his 100 crore opening record after 3506 days?

Are sports bodies of Indian states promoting the game properly?
NEW DELHI: Somewhere on a muddy school field in Haryana right now, a teenager is perhaps drilling the same throwing technique over and over, just as she had watched on television just days ago. Her sole aim is to pull off the one like Sharmila Dhankar, India’s Commonwealth Games shot put gold medallist. Before the 2026 CWG campaign, she, like many of us, had almost certainly never heard the name. And it’s not because Dhankar had not won anything before the Glasgow Games; she had, a gold medal in the Women’s Shot Put F57 event at the 2026 Fazza International Para Athletics Championship, but because one of the primary institutions whose entire job was to carry that story back from the medal podium to villages and training grounds across the state has, for all practical purposes, gone quiet. That’s the part of this story that rarely gets told. India walked away from Glasgow with 39 medals, and for a week, the athletes who won them were everywhere, garlanded at airports, seated beside ministers, their faces on the evening news. But medals don’t build the next generation of athletes by themselves. Somebody has to keep telling their stories, long after the felicitation photo is filed away, to the kid training in a dusty school ground who needs proof that this path actually leads somewhere.
Medal tally of India’s athletes by birth state/UT
We wanted to know which state sports departments are still doing their job of promoting the sports and their grassroots on their social media platforms, and which ones seem to have simply logged off. So we scrolled through the timelines ourselves. Here’s what we found.
Haryana: Hit on the podium, not so much off it
No state produced more glory in Glasgow than Haryana. Eleven medallists, including seven gold, two silver, two bronze, spanning boxing, wrestling, athletics, and para sport, headlined by a Neeraj Chopra silver that will be replayed on sports channels for years. Alongside him were names most of India still had little knowledge of. The likes of Preeti Pawar, Jaismine Lamboria, Sakshi Chaudhary, Priya Ghanghas, Sachin Siwach, and Ankush Panghal, all of whom trained in government facilities, under government schemes, and who’d probably appreciate their own state department cheering as loudly for them as it does for its concert lineups. Because that’s the thing. The Sports Department, Government of Haryana’s X account has posted exactly once in all of 2026, and it’s a flyer for the music acts playing at the Chief Minister’s Cup. Facebook and Instagram follow a similar rhythm with a short cluster of posts around that February event, and then not much else. Eleven medals, and not one dedicated post to show for it. Somewhere in Rohtak or Bhiwani, a young pugilist training in Priya Ghanghas’s discipline would probably just like a little proof that someone up top is paying attention.
Manipur still talking about 2023
Manipur’s page has an odd time-capsule quality to it. This is the state that gave India Mirabai Chanu, one of the country’s most beloved Olympic medalists, and this Commonwealth Games alone produced four medalists from Manipur, Chanu’s gold among them, alongside Rishikanta Singh, Bindyarani Devi, and Jadumani Singh. And yet the Department of Youth Affairs & Sports’ X account hasn’t posted since October 2023, a “Run for Unity” event, frozen well before any of this year’s medals happened. Although the Facebook page has had a few sporadic posts here and there this year, its Instagram account has managed just two posts since January. It’s the kind of gap that makes you wonder if someone simply forgot the login details somewhere along the way.
Rajasthan: 14 years and counting
If there’s one number in this whole exercise worth sitting with, it’s this: the official Sports Department, Government of Rajasthan hasn’t posted on Facebook since April 14, 2012. Fourteen years, through Arundhati Choudhary’s Commonwealth gold and everything else that’s happened in Rajasthan sport since. Its X account’s last original post predates a retweet from March 2021, and there’s no Instagram at all. A parallel handle, the Rajasthan State Sports Council, exists across all three platforms and is barely livelier. Somewhere behind Choudhary’s medal is a genuinely good story, but it just hasn’t found a home on the one page built to tell it.
Uttar Pradesh and Delhi carry the same gloomy picture
Gulveer Singh managed both a silver and a bronze for Uttar Pradesh this Games, a rare double that would make a great centrepiece for the state’s sporting year. Instead, across two separate official handles on three platforms, Uttar Pradesh Sports has produced little beyond reposts, while its sister account, Sports Directorate, Govt of Uttar Pradesh, hasn’t posted at all in 2026. Delhi Government, for its part, doesn’t run a dedicated sports account at all on any of the popular social media platforms, so gold medalist Harsh Singh and bronze medalist Tejaswin Shankar, both representing India’s capital, don’t really have an institutional cheerleader online, their wins quietly absorbed into the general churn of city government updates. Both athletes are, in effect, doing their own promotional legwork.
And then come Tamil Nadu and others
Set against all that quiet, Tamil Nadu feels like a different sport altogether. Its Sports Tamil Nadu handles post multiple times a day, celebrating not just its own three medalists, Praveen Chithravel, Selva Prabhu, Muthupandi Raja, but athletes from other states too, weaving in government scheme updates without it ever reading like bureaucracy. Every medallist got a dedicated post. Somewhere in Tamil Nadu, a kid training in long jump or wrestling doesn’t have to wonder whether the sport leads anywhere. The state tells them, publicly, almost daily. Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka’s Facebook and Instagram pages, Assam, Bihar, and Tripura all follow a version of that same habit, active, consistent, generous with attention toward athletes nobody outside their district would otherwise know existed. Kerala doesn’t run a separate sports handle on X but keeps its Facebook and Instagram genuinely lively, making sure Murali Sreeshankar and Mohammed Basil’s silvers got their due. Andhra Pradesh mirrors that same rhythm across all three platforms.
The ones somewhere in the middle
Not every state falls neatly into being inactive or staying proactive. Punjab’s account managed just two posts on X all year, New Year’s and Republic Day, though its Facebook and Instagram carry a bit more life around coaching and departmental meetings, even if athletes rarely get top billing. Uttarakhand was genuinely active last year before cooling off in 2026, leaning more toward government scheme announcements on Facebook, though its Instagram at least carried two posts around the Games.
How active are states/UTs with CWG medallists in promoting sport
Maharashtra has dedicated posts up for both Sarvesh Kushare and Dilip Gavit, with Instagram staying fairly regular, enough effort to stay out of the quiet column. Karnataka’s X account hasn’t posted since March 2024, around an unrelated cultural-team event, even though its Facebook and Instagram have stayed warm and active toward its CWG medalists.
Does it matter so much?
It is worth asking why this actually matters, beyond good manners. Well, a state sports department’s social media feed isn’t just a courtesy board for congratulations; it’s one of the cheapest, most direct tools available to build the next generation of athletes. A youngster in a small town is far more likely to pick up a javelin because they saw a state government post celebrating someone from their own district. Even when it comes to promoting any government policy, social media can be as effective.
Join conversation
Share your thoughts in the comments
Be respectful · TOI community guidelines
Visibility drives aspiration. There’s a funding logic too. Sponsors, corporates, and even state finance departments allocate resources partly based on visible public interest, and a well-run social account is often the easiest evidence a sport has that interest. ALSO READ: Anahat Singh: What is in the name? A word from Guru Nanak’s prayer, now India’s squash sensation Silence, on the other hand, sends the message that grassroots sport isn’t a priority worth the effort of a single post, even when the state has just produced a medallist on the world stage. It is worth it because sometimes, the first step towards building a sporting culture is simply showing people that their achievements are being seen.
End of Article

Here is the twist. There is no famous investor listed for either name to give comfort. The public’s holding has grown in numbers over the past year.
These stocks have attracted the attention of smart investors because AI has become one the most popular themes on the Indian market. The data and stories are there, but the two balance sheets have been radically different. A brutal correction has brought them together.
Kellton Tech, The microcap AI plumber trading below book value
Kellton Tech, a digital transformation firm based in Hyderabad, has clients from the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific. According to the presentation for the quarter ending June 2026, the US brings in 81.5 percent of revenues and the digital transformation business accounts for 84%.
It has partnered with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and SAP.
This isn’t a presentation for investors. This is not a slide in an investor deck. Phoenix.ai was launched by the company during the quarter of June 2026. It is a platform which uses AI agents in order to transform old, monolithic enterprise applications into cloud-native, modern pieces. The company also launched Structi.ai – an engine which transforms unstructured data to inputs AI can use.
The company has achieved Select Tier Partner status in the Snowflake AI Data Cloud. It deployed its Optima platform, a digital oilfield for Oil India. Within six months after starting the project, 77 wells were under real-time surveillance.
This is the real AI plumbing that real clients are using in banking, energy, agriculture, and industrial services. Why has the price of this stock been halved in half?
Steady Top-Line, Stagnant Margins
Look at the financial statements for the past five years to see how well the business has done.
EBITDA is operating profit prior to other income. A one-off disclosure. The FY23 loss was Rs 127 Cr, which came from an entry for negative other income of Rs 182 Cr. This is a noncash writedown. The operating profit was positive that year at Rs 93 crore. The CAGR of net profit is calculated on the reported figures, including recovery.
For a company who talks AI, 9% CAGR in sales is not impressive. Sales of Rs. 1,237 Cr. and a net profit of R. 91 Cr., which is a margin of 7.4%. Sales of Rs. 316 Cr., an increase of 6.8% over the previous year, were achieved in June 2026. Net profit was Rs. 22 Cr. Not spectacular, but steady.
The 8x PE multiple: Is it a hidden gem or a value trap?
Kellton Tech Solutions’ share price was approximately Rs 11 at the end of August 2021, and Rs 14 as of 6th August 2026.
In terms of valuations, shares are currently trading at an PE of 8x while the median for the sector is 26x. The company’s 10-year median PE is 9x, while the sector median is 28x.
The interesting part is here. Kellton is trading at Rs 14,2 at 0.93x its book value per share of Rs 15,2. Over a ten-year period, the stock price CAGR is negative 1%. The last year has seen a 46% drop in value. Market cap is now Rs 752 Cr against an annual sale of Rs 1,217 Cr.
Promoters Exit and Cash Burn
This register has three flags, none of which are small.
In the first place, the promoter’s holding fell from 52.14 % in June 2023, to 36.7 % in March 20,26. This is a drop of 14.5 points within three years. Public now owns 61.3% of the company, which is spread over more than 2 lakh investors. Domestic institutions hold nothing.
Second, cash. Cash flow from operations in FY26 was negative Rs. 10 Cr. against an operating loss of Rs. 135 Cr. Cash flow from operations was negative by Rs 208 Cr as the capital works in progress increased from Rs 32 cr. to Rs. 165 cr. In FY26, the company borrowed Rs 188 crore to finance this. The company’s profit on paper does not translate into money in the bank.
In FY26, the debtor days increased from 96 to 118. On the earnings call for July 2026, management itself highlighted slow collection from government contracts and large clients. The P&L can be inflated when a company’s revenue is recorded faster than its collection.
Zensar Technologies is the cash-rich AI Adopter with 0 debt.
Zensar Technologies, which is headquartered in Pune and belongs to the RPG Group, has a market capitalization of Rs 11,389 Cr, a dividend of 3%, and virtually no debt.
The AI initiative is more aggressive than that of most middle-tier IT companies. According to the earnings commentary for July 2026, 85% is the company’s workforce are now AI certified. ZenseAI is a suite of products that the company developed. It includes AgentMesh – a platform released in June 2026 for enterprises to run AI agent fleets – and ZenseAI.GW – a collection of accelerators designed to assist insurance clients who are moving their operations to Guidewire’s cloud.
In the June quarter, a US-based book distributor won an AI deduction audit platform powered by AI and an AI agent management platform.
The banking and financial sector now accounts for 48.8%. A mega-deal worth $210 million signed during the quarter of March 2026 began to generate revenue in mid-February. Full ramp is expected in the quarter of December.
If Profit Growth Exceeds Sales
Here is a look at five-year financials
EBITDA is the operating profit prior to other revenue. Profits compounded by 20%, but sales only compounded by 9%. Margin repair and other income are the gap. Operating margins fell from 11% to 16% in FY23 and then rose to 16% in FY26. Other income, which is mainly earnings from the investment book, also grew, going from negative Rs 24 crore in FY21, to Rs 209 cr in FY26. If you remove that, the profits of the core business have grown at a much slower pace.
Sales of Rs 1,508 cr were up by 8.9% year-on-year, while net profits of Rs 184 cr rose just 1%. The mega-deal, additional hiring and the rebuilt sales team all took their toll on margins. The management has stated that they expect the third quarter to be better, as more orders are converted.
There is a Rs 2,600 crore cash pile: the valuation disconnect
Zensar Technologies’ share price was about Rs 415 at the end of August 2021, and Rs 501 as of 6th August.
In terms of valuation, this stock is valued at 14x the PE median for the sector. The company’s 10-year PE median is 20x, while the industry average for that same time period is 23x. Stocks have corrected more than 40% since their all-time peak of Rs. 985.
This multiple is well below the average for quality midcaps in IT. The company has a ROCE of 23%, an order book record, and plenty of cash.
Financial strength is a quiet strength. The borrowings dropped from Rs 350 crore in FY21 down to Rs 79 crore in FY26. Investments have grown from Rs 350 cr to Rs 1,921 crore. End of June 2026 the net cash and equivalents was $317.5 millions, over Rs 2,600 crore, or approximately 23% of market capitalization. The company’s FY26 cash flow totaled Rs 719 crore, with a dividend of 44%.
The Foreign Exit and the Cannibalization of Tech Budgets
Two risks deserve a mention. The foreign institutional holdings have fallen from 16,5% in March to 10,7% in June. The domestic institutions bought the supply and increased it from 17.5% up to 22%. However, the persistent foreign outflow is still a factor in the pricing.
Irony is a part of the second risk. Zensar’s technology vertical is shrinking as its clients cut their outsourcing budgets in order to finance AI capital expenditure. The management has set a budget of zero growth for its largest TMT client in FY27. Zensar’s AI is also the wave that has eaten one of Zensar’s verticals. The June quarter’s fresh order intake was $149.2 millions, which is also the lowest in several quarters.
The markets do not price cash flows, but rather the market prices them
Two AI stocks have very different stories. Kellton, a microcap company priced below the book value, has AI platforms that are working but cash flow which isn’t keeping pace. The promoters sold one-seventh of the firm in the last three years and there is no institutional investor on the register. Markets demand that the 8x multiple prove that profits are able to be converted into cash.
Zensar, a middle-cap company with a different profile. Zensar is a cash-rich midcap with an opposite profile. It pays dividends, has a nearly-debt-free balance sheet, and has 85% of employees trained in AI. The 14x multiple is a reflection of a business that’s in transition and not one with a questionable balance sheet.
Anyone who chases the AI story through news headlines will find this lesson uncomfortable. The fact that both stocks have suffered a sharp correction is not due to the genuine AI. Not press releases, but collections, conversion and cash are what the market prices. Retail investors should know the difference between the two risk profiles, as the term AI is used in both and has a different meaning in each.
Add these stocks to your watchlist, and monitor the cash flow over the coming quarters.
Disclaimer:
Note: We have relied on data from http://www.Screener.in and http://www.trendlyne.com throughout this article. We have only used alternative sources of data when the original source was unavailable.
This article’s sole purpose is to provide interesting data, charts and opinions that provoke thought. This is not a recommendation. You should consult with your financial advisor if you want to make an investment. The purpose of this article is solely educational.
Suhel has followed the market with passion for more than a decade. During that time, he worked as the head of sales and marketing for a Mumbai-based Equity Research Organisation. He spends most of his current time analysing the investment and strategy of Super Investors of India.
Disclosure: This article was not written by the writer or his family members. The website managers, its employee(s), and contributors/writers/authors of articles have or may have an outstanding buy or sell position or holding in the securities, options on securities or other related investments of issuers and/or companies discussed therein.

This was an historic announcement. The agreement was a historic one.
The Mecca Joint Defence Pact (as it is called) has raised concerns about shifting power dynamics within the Middle East.
Read More Stories
List of three items
List 1 of 3War against Iran: Saudi Arabia signs defence agreement with Turkiye, Pakistan and Turkiye
List 2 of 3Two civillians were killed by Houthi attack on Marib according to Yemeni government
List 3 of 3Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan Sign joint defense agreement: what’s it about?
End of List
The deal, according to experts, could be the start of a regional alliance between Israel and Iran that is wary of each.
The signatories have been careful not to portray the agreement as an act of deterrence.
Analysts have noted that all three countries are careful not to upset regional rivals. The extent to which this pact will force the members of the alliance to defend each other is still unclear.
We haven’t yet seen the Mecca Declaration. “We believe that it states an attack against one person should be considered as an attack against all of us — and the key word is’should’ because ‘necessarily,'” Harlan Ullman told Al Jazeera.
These threats are real. Pakistan is engaged in border conflicts with Afghanistan and India since February.
Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly attacked by Iran and its allies ever since the United States-Israeli War against Iran began in late February.
Turkiye, on the other hand, has been fighting Kurdish militant groups inside and outside its borders for many years. The tensions between Israel and Turkey have increased.
Ullman, an expert in the field of Mecca Joint Defence Pacts says that it’s still unclear whether or not its signatories will be drawn into these conflicts.
Does it matter if the Houthis attack Saudi Arabia? What about Pakistan? Ullman added: “That remains to be determined.”
Regional dynamics shifting
Middle East turmoil has increased in the last few years. This is especially true since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s subsequent genocide of Gaza.
The regional conflict that is still ongoing has culminated from decades of tensions between Iran and Israel.
The Middle East, and other countries around the world are trying to find a way to cope with chaos and prepare themselves for the future.
In the face of common threats, many states seem to have put their differences in the past and decided that pragmatism was the way forward.
Turkiye & Saudi Arabia provide good examples. After the murder of Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi at his consulate in Istanbul, a rift developed between both countries.
By 2022 Riyadh, Ankara, and other regional leaders had put their differences behind them. The former was pursuing an anti-escalation policy, while the latter sought to boost its economy.
Since then, Israel has exerted pressure in the Middle East and Iran is pursuing different views for the area.
It is believed that this pressure helped bring countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye closer together.
Establishing deterrence
The Mecca Joint Defence Pact is designed to deter any threats that the three countries might face.
Al Jazeera’s correspondent Osamah bin Javaid noted that each side has different strengths.
Bin Javaid stated that “each of these nations brings unique capabilities, including Pakistan’s combat-tested military and its nuclear arsenal, which is the only one found in a Muslim majority nation.”
The Turkish government, as a NATO member of vital importance, has developed world-class technology for drones and advanced defence manufacturing. Saudi Arabia is the financial power behind it all.
Questions about US reliability have increased the need for new alliances and deterrence against threat. Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, to a lesser degree, consider the US as a major security partner.
As the US foreign policy becomes more erratic, under Donald Trump’s presidency, other countries around the globe are demanding alternatives.
The experts also say that Israel seems to be the US top priority for foreign policy in the Middle East. This raises concerns over its willingness to protect other allies.
Ullman stated that “the Trump administration said allies must fend themselves” It is clear that the allies of America are turning elsewhere.
Israel and Iran are regional enemies, but the Mecca Joint Defence Pact signatories have taken care not to portray the alliance in a way that it is aimed against any outside force.
Experts say that the dangers of Iran and Israel are obvious.
Bin Javaid stated that “Israel remains the greatest threat to regional stability and security for all three countries.”
After the attacks by Iran against Washington, Iran is a close follower in this threat matrix.
After 2023, Israel has shown that, contrary to what many people in the Middle East believed, it prefers military force over negotiations in order to settle differences.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has begun speaking of a “Sunni-axis”, though he did not specify what it might be.
However, experts argue that his comments could become a self fulfilling prophecy, bringing together sunni majority countries. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye are all countries with Sunni majority.
Iran has attacked Saudi Arabia as well as other Iranian-backed organizations. Saudi Arabia has, on its part, responded by striking Iranian-backed Iraqi groups.
No new members yet?
The Mecca Joint Defence Pact has not yet been expanded to include additional states such as Egypt (Qatar), Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
It is easy to see the benefits of an alliance like this: Middle East countries with a majority Sunni have been often divided. Observers claim that their failure to combat Israel and Iran’s threats stems from these divisions.
The expansion of this alliance is not a foregone conclusion because the past divisions and differing interest are still present.
Syria is, for example, focusing on reconstruction following a 13-year brutal conflict. Due to its proximity to Israel, it may be reluctant about entering into an agreement that could negatively affect that country.
Egypt has also signalled that it is focusing on its economy in order to avoid domestic unrest.
It has in the past resisted joining a maritime alliance led by Saudi Arabia to protect the shipping routes of the region for fear that it would be drawn into a conflict.
The UAE could be another potential member of the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkiye alliance, but its positions have repeatedly diverged from those countries in recent years, most notably over issues like Yemen and its normalisation of ties with Israel.
As a result of this normalisation, Abraham Accords backed by the US, present another regional grouping more aligned to Israel that could be viewed as a competitor to the Mecca Alliance nations.
Any narrative that suggests a new order in the region will emerge following the Friday pact is flawed by the complexity of Middle East relationships.
In the past decades, alliances have shifted in this region. The alliances may shift once again.
This alliance is only going to be tested when the real test comes. Israel and Iran are both willing to fight and face the consequences. Saudi Arabia, Turkiye or Pakistan are willing to sacrifice themselves for one another?
A scenario in today’s Middle East could force these countries to take such a step. These decisions would ultimately reveal whether or not a new regional axis has emerged.