As Indian carmaker Mahindra & Mahindra battles with what to call its South Korean brand Ssangyong in the future, it is leveraging its far eastern affiliate’s expertise in four wheel drive SUVs.

It plans to launch a rival model to Ford’s Ecosport using a joint Mahindra-Ssangyong platform project. just-auto understands the project, codenamed S102 is based on SsangYong’s X100, and will be launched in global markets in the first half of next year or early 2016.