The goal is to design and make very smart electric scooters that are best suited for India and Indians. Given the diversity of the country’s weather and terrain, what is good for India must be good for the rest of the world! This is the company’s DNA, which contrasts with time-tested norms in the industry.

There is a business case for importing technology and assembling in India or the why-reinvent-the-wheel syndrome. From the word go, Ather’s founders moved against this norm because they believed that millions of Indian commuters deserve a two-wheeler that is an upgrade from what was available in the market, has great performance, and comes loaded with features that have so far been mostly found only in passenger cars.

At Ather, this idea is stretched to cover every aspect of the vehicle, including performance, safety, and cost of ownership during a vehicle’s life on the road. Features such as the SkidControl TM, Emergency Stop Signal (ESS), and Fall Safe are good examples of how software-based smart systems provide real-time safety interventions for riders. Also, Ather is ably supported by its Advance Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS).

R&D is strong

Ather is able to offer more sophisticated safety features like dynamic traction control and adaptive braking, thus significantly improving rider safety. Such safety features are more common in cars than two-wheelers in India. Ather’s monomaniacal focus on R&D based on a thorough understanding of what its customers want has delivered two big invaluable assets for this relatively new OEM – a long list of industry firsts under its belt and a growing cult following among ordinary Indian two-wheeler commuters.

The underlying ‘contrarianism’ allows Ather’s founders to look beyond the obvious. For example, when the rest of the world looks at China as the factory of the world, Ather’s Mehta points out how the Asian giant is able to dominate the global manufacturing sector by investing more in R&D. He cites China’s EV car company BYD, which now has more people in R&D than the rest of the auto industry outside of China combined. “Its (BYD) R&D team size is approaching 100,000 people, with some 20,000-30,000 engineers hired last year alone. Almost 10 per cent of its revenue is spent on R&D, even at the scale of $40-50 billion in annual revenues. Those are gargantuan numbers,” says Mehta.

He explains further: “Given the demographic advantage we are sitting on, our policy focus on R&D needs to go up in a big way. Remember, suppliers come and set up capacities where OEMs produce. OEMs produce where their new product development (NPD) happens. And NPD happens where there are engineers. That’s why China today wins the NPD game so that it can continue to maintain its eventual manufacturing advantage.”

According to Mehta, India should have a million engineers in R&D in all critical sectors, and spending must be in double digits, at least 10-15 per cent of revenue. The heavy reliance on its R&D capabilities has also made Ather one of the most vertically design-integrated automobile companies in the country. There is ‘contrarianism’ here too. It has been a norm in the industry to rely heavily on tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers to handle the designing of sub-systems like the drivetrain, steering system, braking system, suspension, electrical, ignition, etc. In the long run, the outsourcing of design (read engineering, not aesthetics) is proving to be self-defeating because in emerging sectors like EV, the current low volumes disincentivise the supplier from cutting costs with better engineering, aka spending more on R&D.

Ather’s head of technology, Jain, says: “What we are talking about here is a paradigm shift in how automobile companies design and build their vehicles. The subsystems can still be manufactured by vendors, but the designing and development part has to happen with the OEM. This will not be easy, but it is imminent.” He believes this needs a “cultural shift” led by OEM leadership.

“Promoters, founders, and senior leadership will have to drive this shift by believing that we can engineer this change from within. Next, we need to invest in people by hiring managers and team members who are passionate about solving engineering challenges, and they in turn will have to be empowered with access to the best technologies, labs, etc. In short, we have to drastically increase investment in R&D and people.”

Ather spent its first 5 years designing all the subsystems and technology instead of taking existing components and stacking them together. To do this for a product like EV two-wheelers that is fairly new in the auto industry makes the feat all the more remarkable. Despite performing the same job of moving people around, EV and petrol vehicles at their core have very little in common and therefore there is not much of an existing automobile ecosystem (suppliers, know-how, etc) to support the former.

Over the years, Ather has worked together with suppliers to design and develop EV components, creating an ecosystem for electric two-wheelers that other OEMs now benefit from. Since taking full ownership of design, it is also able to align with vendors with a shared vision of the future. Xabier Eskibel, Head Marketing – 2W at UNO Minda, says: “Back in 2016, Ather did not have a proper office, but there was lots of impressive technology, a great aluminium frame, BMS and a battery pack. When we were making a shift to EV manufacturing, the first reliable company that came up was Ather. We liked their vision, their ambition, and their culture and took up the business of supplying their seats and lights, which was our first project with them. We liked working in this environment. Then came Rizta, in which we saw an evolution in not just the product, but also their vision. The demands for the seat and lamps were far more specific, complex and clearer, and given the segment they were targeting, it made sense. The essence of the company remains delivering well-built vehicles, and their progression from high-performance scooters to also building a family scooter is commendable.”

The second big value delivered by Ather’s contrarian approach is its ability to attract a cult following among ordinary Indian two-wheeler commuters. Today, the online customer forum run by Ather has more than two-lakh members who discuss everything EV and Ather under the sun. Interesting ideas and suggestions that bubble up in this forum invariably find their way into the Ather R&D centre as well. The company’s annual Ather Community Day (the second edition was held this past April) is a spectacle of sorts for the customer community members who travel from across the country to gather at India’s tech capital mainly to see what is the latest to come from the Ather R&D centre.

Accelerating growth

Apart from Rizta, Ather also launched its first smart helmet, Halo, at the same event. Ather’s ability to engineer solutions has also gone beyond its own business interests. Ather R&D played a big role in co-developing the new Light Electric Combined Charging System or LECCS, based on IS17017 – Part 2/Sec 7. This is the first AC-DC charging system specifically designed for light electric vehicles that offers a substantial improvement over the less-capable Type 6 connector and provides functionality similar to the expensive CCS2 connector at 60 per cent lower cost. A handful of competitors have already adopted this as their charging standard as well, and should the rest of the industry follow suit, there will exist a nationwide network of interoperable charging stations. This one move alone can accelerate the growth of the EV sector in the country.

A handful of serious EV companies and their legacy counterparts from the petrol/diesel world now catching up with India’s clean mobility shift are today shaping the next version of the country’s automobile sector. Constantly evolving battery technology and promising new fuels like green hydrogen point towards what the future may bring.

India is one of the world’s largest automobile-producing countries and is the only market of its size where two-wheelers dominate by a big margin. Jain and Mehta believe this is a rare opportunity for a country like India to assert its leadership by focusing a lot more on R&D. LECCS (charging standard), for example, could become a global standard. Nearly 60 per cent of the 1.67 million electric vehicles sold in the country last fiscal were EV two-wheelers, and 95 per cent were light electric vehicles (two and three-wheelers combined). So, what goes on in this ten-year-old start-up and its R&D lab is in many ways laying the foundation for how India’s EV sector evolves, and that is as contrarian as it gets in an industry steeped in traditions.