The 2023 Acko Drive Awards programme is ‘The One That Matters’, abbreviated to TOTM; and the winners list reflects the best in the business. The ceremony which was hosted by Siddharth Vinayak Patankar and Gul Panag, had all the glamour and special moments that make such an awards show special. The 2023 Acko Drive Car Of The Year was awarded to the Skoda Slavia compact sedan. The TOTM for 2023 Acko Drive BikeOf TheYear went to the Vida V1 electric scooter from Hero – beating out a very stiff competition set of motorcycles and scooters. It was for the first time in the history of the automotive industry that a scooter,and that too an electric, has won the top prize. The optional hybrid Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara was the runner-up in car category, while the powerful KTM RC390 was the runner-up in bikes.
The TOTMs for overall Premium Bike and PremiumCar went to the Ducati DesertX and Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 4MATIC+ respectively. The Suzuki Katana and Audi Q3 were the runners-up. Maruti Suzuki was declared 2023 Manufacturer of the Year (Car), and Royal Enfield snapped up the TOTM on the Bike side. The 2023 Acko Awards attracted industry bigwigs like Hero MotoCorp’s Dr. Pawan Munjal, Mahindra’s Rajesh Jejurikar, Maruti’s Shashank Srivastava and Dr. CV Raman, Santosh Iyer from Mercedes-Benz, Skoda-Volkswagen Group’s Piyush Arora, Audi’s BalbirSingh Dhillon, Naveen Soni from Lexus, Ducati’s Bipul Chandra, Kia’s Tae-Jin Park, Rajeev Chaba from MG, Vikram Pawah from BMW, Ather’s Tarun Mehta, and Royal Enfield’s YS Guleria.
The popular awards or Viewers’ Choice which were voted on by the people also drew much attention. The Mahindra Scorpio-N thumped its competition with a wide margin to win 2023 Acko Drive Viewers’ Choice Car of Year. The Honda CB 300F was most voted for in the 2023 Acko Drive Viewers’ Choice Bike Of The Year category. On the tech side, the audience chose Honda Sensing ADAS technology available on the Honda City as the 2023 Acko Drive Tech Of The Year.
Rajesh Jejurikar, Executive Director and CEO, Auto and Farm, Mahindra and Mahindra was the 2023 Acko Drive Person Of The Year. Tarun Mehta, Founder of Ather, was the firstever winner of the Jagdish Khattar Rising Star Award – an honour that recognises a promising achiever in the startup or automobile manufacturing and engineering realms. Awards were also given for stellar communication work done by auto brands in Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations, over the past year. The Tata Tiago EV won the 2023 EVCar, BMW i4 won the 2023 Premium EV, and the Vida V1 also won the 2023 EV Bike award.
The first edition of the 2023 Acko Drive Awards have now set a benchmark in the auto industry, for credibility, process, and also for the ceremony itself, in the industry. The awards were a symbol of true recognition of the very best that the automotive sector had to offer. The awards are certainly ‘The One That Matters’
Disclaimer: This article has been produced on behalf of the brand by HT Brand Studio.