The Ledger, every show

“Even if it was a hundred percent coal based, it will still make sense.”

“Long term distribution is not really a moat in India.”

“The way we implemented and the way Ola implemented I think Ola's same capability would last a much shorter time. So if you engage this hill hole feature on a steep slope after a minute or so, the motor would be like, okay, now I can't support this. It'll start…”

“Not a single country, not a single two-wheeler market competes with the technology standards of India today.”

“Volumes, they are ahead, but volumes will catch up in the next three, four years. But in terms of just sheer technology, and product quality, and product the feature list. No, I'm not just speaking for Aether. I'm just, I'm speaking actually about the entire e…”

“So my belief for the last several years has been electric scooters will decimate the Commuter entry motorcycle market in India over the next 10 years. What will be left as motorcycles is the premium and the high performance category, one 8200 cc and beyond, wh…”

“So I think, ah, open sourcing the patents was more, ultimately served more PR purpose than genuine accelerate the industry purpose.”

“I think tier one daily usage is 31 kilometers, tier two is like, 32, tier three is like, 29. There is no meaningful difference of usage, daily usage. There is no meaningful difference of buying patterns. Tier one, tier two, tier three.”

“Charging standard has become the national standard.”

“The challenge of setting up cell manufacturing in India for a while now has been demanding. And the minimum investment required is pretty high. Like if you're not putting, if you're not bringing four, 5000 crores to the table, practically, it'll be very diffic…”

“So I've really considered cell manufacturing is this really complexly bad combo. Very high tech with commodity margins. So it only makes strategic sense. It generally doesn't make cost sense.”

“So for example, our oldest battery packs are now five years in the field. And we have, they are still at 90% plus health, which means we are now internally starting to project eight to 10 year battery life. We know in the industry that I think most of our comp…”

“Range is a cost. Range is a product spec decision. How much range is? Obviously, it gets missold as like, you know, somebody's cracked this amazing battery that'll do thousand kilometers in a car. It's only two batteries. It doesn't crack any amazing technolog…”

“So your entry, entry point to building an e-to-wheeler in the market today, your table stakes of just entering this business, in my opinion, is about a hundred million. If you're bringing a hundred million, you can enter the game, and then you'll have to raise…”

“Yes, that's why I said it's the world's largest R&D for two wheelers, electric two wheelers.”

“Every company who's talked about cracking subscription, quickly, quietly became a financing company. Everybody.”

“We realized OEM signed two camps, Either they're very smart, and they know that we won't have EV. Ok. EV is still like a 10 year old story, later story. Or they're idiots, and they think importing from China is a brilliant strategy.”

“Long term, I do think that electric vehicles are not going to make money on servicing. They just can't. And as quality improves for each of, each one of us, their number will drop even further. I think long-term electric vehicles will have to make money on som…”

“In the absence of it, there's no way lithium-ion prices would have become affordable because it changed the underlying economics of the industry radically. The small form factor sales were very affordable, but the small form factor sales would have never, neve…”

“Once you build hardware, once you've stabilized your platform, you've got a really powerful lead. You've got a really powerful moat that internet businesses can never deliver on. Almost never. SaaS maybe. Internet powered businesses, almost never.”

“It's best to build a muscle in the company yourselves first and fail a little bit at it before you bring in the real leadership and before you bring in the big guns. Every time we've attempted something as a lazy approach, let's just hire a solid VP for this a…”

“We are not a country where you can sell stuff on Twitter to a meaningful audience. You can sell stuff to Twitter for like five crore people, but tool is about by like 30 crore people. So you have to, you should almost consider, which actually we've not been su…”

“I love newspapers. Front page ads. Nothing works better. Like the amount of football they bring in, I kid you not. They pay themselves back over a weekend. Like the best ROI.”

“Indranagar on many months beats Apple global averages quite, quite comfortably. I think on a regular month, I think it also beats, but on a good month, festive months, I think it's like double that of Apple global average.”

“Most good founders will be largely driven by their own thoughts. Most good founders are never doing the, what is the current advice or what is the current YC yarn to people. That's for mass consumption. That's content strategy. That's not a good advice on aver…”

“In scooters at least, our math was, it is. It is 40% less emission than a petrol scooter. You're at least reducing emission to 40%. Even if the grid does not become greener at all.”

“Actually in two wheelers, it's the largest fast charging network in the country.”

“We'll go from 200 touch points to a thousand touch points in the next two and a half years. At which point you've crossed oil and field scale already.”

“Most cell manufacturing companies, the really enormous ones, like LG Chem, Panasonic, all these guys, even in the best times that they made cells and sold cells, had like crazy ability to sell price at any point. They can sell at any price, like last year basi…”

“So you set up recycling. I think it is such a stable business. It's two fifty million vehicles going to go to three fifty million vehicles and annually out of that three, thirty million is going to come back. And 1015 years later, a very large chunk of that wi…”

“The problem is the asset cost of an electric car is so high, that the kilometer saving is only worth it if you buy a car in the 10 to 20 lakh range. If you buy like a 80 lakh, 40, even a 40 lakh electric car, you don't have an ROI. Unless you run it like a hun…”

“We attempted a variant of it. So I do believe in it, and I still do, and I'm hoping that we learn how to crack it. But back in twenty-twenty ... We said you could take a battery on subscription. ... Enormous, massive community pullback, like pushback, like, be…”

“This was the world's first aluminum frame, bolted aluminum frame on a scooter in production. This was the first scooter anywhere in the world to deploy a touchscreen dashboard, and the first one to have Google Maps.”

“So in a sense, our revenue is, I would say about 85% is hardware. 15% is already software.”

“India has never been historically, actually, really, if you think about it, it's not really been a demand-constrained market. We've been a sub, genuinely, we've been a supply-constrained market. We don't get the good stuff. We get the good stuff at a ridiculou…”

“Bullet. It's a famous product. Yeah, we all know about it. It does, I think, 14,000 units a month. Pan India. Wow. We do 14,000 today.”

“TV, I don't think TV drives immediate footfalls. I think TV is more salient, more long-term salience. You kind of want to be that brand that, yes, I've seen TV on the TV. I mean, we'll have money. We'll have something to think about. Basically, setting up an e…”

“For example, right now we are the only player where we don't put any restriction on fast charging. So we tell our customers, if you want to fast charge practically every day, be my guest, right?”

“Yeah, but none of us in India does liquid cooling for a two-wheeler. Crazy cost structure. Doesn't make sense today.”

“I'm almost certain a carbon tax is headed our way in India.”

“When we launched in 2018, Ather four 50 was the fastest accelerating scooter ever produced in the country. I mean, all scooters, all petrol scooters included.”

“It was minus -300% negative gross margin. Yeah, -300% gross margin. That was the cost.”

“So, last year, I think about six, seven lakh vehicles were sold, ah, electric. us, Ola, TVS were about, I think, 50% of it. I think we did one lakh, I think Ola did 1.5 lakhs, and TVS did, again, just under a lakh. So about three, three and a half lakh betwee…”

“In India, the market leader, In two wheelers. Always gets to 50% plus market share. Splendor. Dominating market share. More than 50%. Activa. Winner. 55% market share. Pulsar. Winner. In the commuter sports category. I think more than 50% market share. Royal E…”

“FI. 20, 21 was 75 crores. FI. 21, 22 was 410 crores. And 20 to 23 was 1800.”

“There, I think is a pretty fast expanding hardware ecosystem in the country, and it's no longer an art to do hardware. I think there's an ecosystem of engineering talent coming out now that's kind of seen these systems built out.”

“In fact, I think electrification, electric vehicles, because of the amount of lead India has, Is going to create one of the first waves of genuine platform builders on hardware in India after a very long time.”

“That, two hundred and fifty million two-wheelers on Indian roads, this number I think will become close to about four hundred million by the end of this decade, including exits of old vehicles.”