Globally, the e-bike market size is estimated to be around $40 billion. It is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR over the next few years as people look for eco-friendly and cost effective commuting solutions. India’s EMotorad, an electric bike company, is eying a chunk of this globally exciting business with its innovative and stylist electric cycles products. In a recent interview with The 1% Club, EMotorad’s CEO, Kunal Gupta shared the story behind his company, journey so far and why he thinks there is a huge market for electric cycles in India. Edited Excerpts
How did you get into bikes?
I have been in this commute industry for almost a decade now. Have been solving similar first mile last mile problems through various modes of transportation. Prior to this, I co-founded a company called On Bikes where we were providing IC engine bikes on rent across 11 cities. This is where I understood and grasped real insights on how the commute industry in India works. What is the real gap? What is the consumer exactly looking at? While we were studying all this, we came across a very exciting category, which is electric bikes today. Globally electric bikes have a very, very large market.
People love to commute first mile-last mile on e-bikes because it has so many benefits. It has health benefits, it has cost benefits, it is easy to store. It is a real personal mobility product, which is not dependent on any third party infrastructure. And with that interesting insight and understanding the scale that is projected globally, we got into this venture first to build smart electric bikes out of India and make a dent in the universe. We started this company four years ago. Now it has scaled decently well and came up with four to 14 SKUs as of now and is growing it fast.
Advertisement
Do you really see Indians can use e-bikes for commuting, say for 10-20 kilometers, or to college?
You know, very surprisingly, today 70% of sales, which we do, are being taken by users who are using it for the first mile and last mile commute. They’ve been using it to go to shops, go to their offices, go to their colleges. So it’s not only kids who are buying this product.
Everyone is making their own use cases off the bike. Here we are not trying to completely replace a car or a scooter. What we are saying is we can solve for your first mile and last mile almost on most days of the week, right? Everyday, you don’t need to travel to 25 kilometers in most cases, right? You just have to travel one way five kilometers and come back and that is the average radius in which our country moves. So these are the needs we are trying to solve through E bikes since it is so much more economical and healthier. You can literally charge it at your home so you don’t need anything external. Use it anywhere.
Do you plan to manufacture e-scooters or e-cars in future?
Not four wheelers, we’re trying to solve for everything in two wheeler mobility right now. We have plans for different forms of mobility in future right from market segment to adult and baby boomers segment. So there will be future models which will be upcoming, not a scooter or a car for sure. But it’s going to be a very innovative product which will come out okay.
Where do you see EMotorad going in two years from now?
In terms of unit volume, we might become the largest EV player in the country in terms of units because of the wide range of consumer crowd that we intend to target right from a small kid to a teenager to a young adult to an older person.
Who were you early investors? How did you convince them to invest in this?
The vision is quite big. The market is quite big. They love the team. The problem we are trying to solve is immensely big, right? Everyone saw that if you don’t, if you don’t have a commute, the world gets stuck. Everyone saw that in COVID era and that’s what we’re trying to solve for investors. They are kind enough. One of our first investors was Green frontier capital, who trusted in us and helped us build this scale. While we were also convinced, we put in our own capital to scale this to a certain point.
How big do you think this market is? like, globally?
Globally, it’s a $40 billion market. We are becoming a global company. We’re not specifically focusing on one particular market to solve our problem. It’s a product which can be sold across the globe, and that’s what we are doing.
Do you plan on increasing range of your e-bikes for people who need to commute long-distances daily, such a delivery agents?
Also Read: Electric Vehicle policies in India: Can the retail sector adopt?
We’ll have specific models for catering to the segment in future where you can have multiple batteries on the same bike giving you a good 100 kilometres range.
For those who are tight on budget, are you considering any financing options as well?
We already have around seven to eight financing options for our bikes you can get EMI from Bajaj, Airtel, HDFC Bank, etc
Are there any other ancillary products that you can manufacture or go into?
We are currently getting into the e-bike ecosystem. So right from the bikes to the accessories around the biking, everything is done internally by us. Let’s see what we can always do in terms of our products.
What advice would you give to somebody who would like to come into this ecosystem?
Do it for the love of the consumer understand the real problem that you’re trying to solve? Don’t do it because of the product because the product excites. Commute as a problem is very large and requires a decent amount of capital to solve. It has become more a money problem than a product problem. So rest assured that the problem statement is big and requires big amounts to solve for it.
How many bikes are you like manufacturing everyday and how does it go?
We sell 8000 bikes around a month right now.
That is a sales side, but on the manufacturing side, it’s like a car assembly line or how does it work?
It works like an OEM where we manufacture our own products. There are certain contract manufacturers across the country who supply the certain products, and we assemble it at our place.
Is it more cost effective than an electric scooter?
E-bikes are smart and cost-saving mobility solution: If you’re talking about a parallel, electric scooter costs you over a lakh of rupees and they have an additional charging infrastructure requirement. In e-bikes, however, you can literally charge it just like you charge your your mobile phone. It’s very easy. It’s cost effective. It gives you 7 paisa per kilometer cost, which is absolutely insane. For three years, you’ll literally drive free of cost!
Want to learn the art and science of managing your money? The 1% Club can help. Details here
