 From a cost perspective if yes, how long will it take for the product because you come from a manufacturing time point to be cost neutral with respect to an IC vehicle without the subsidy being sought from the government. Hi, my name is Raja. I'm from Guy Motor Works, Private Lintel. We are into electric three-wheelers. So we are manufacturers of electric three-wheelers and also set up the ecosystem that is required for charging these at the customer's location. Our customers mostly include people like BigBasket, Flipkart, IKEA, Amazon. So that's a specific segment that we have chosen because the profitability is already there. When you compare an electric vehicle to the cost of, you need to look at the cost of operation, the total cost of ownership and not just initial cost of the vehicle. So in terms of initial cost of the vehicle, we are at least another 50% more costly compared to an IC engine. But when you translate that over a period of four years, which is the life cycle of the vehicle, then the cost of ownership is quite low. So for a petrol powered vehicle it's about 5.5 rupees per kilometer but for an electric three-wheeler right now it's at about 2.8 rupees per kilometer. So that's a significant savings. It's half. So total cost of ownership is almost half for an electric vehicle. So what this includes is the initial cost of the vehicle, the maintenance cost over a period of four years, the operational cost over a period of four years. We are at a point where electric vehicles are cheaper. So if the question is why aren't they widespread? The simple answer is convenience and performance of the electric vehicles. So we have focused on high performance electric vehicles because most of the delivery guys, the timing is key. So they want to deliver on time. So our vehicles can travel up to 55 kilometers per hour speed compared to other e-rickshaws which are 25 kilometers per hour speed. So first thing is the Indian mindset, they require acceleration of the vehicle compared to the other models which are mostly coming in from China or other places. They would want performance, speed, acceleration, timely delivery. So those are the key aspects that are required to make people adapt electric vehicles. And right now it's already economical without subsidy to switch to electric for the fried segment. Convenience can be provided in the passenger segment which is what some mobility and various other players are working at. And I think even passenger segment it will be the next one year you should be at a price parity where people will start adopting electric vehicles there as well. I would like to ask Mr. Goldie who's operating smarty in the last mile connectivity segment. While we've been audience to news from the government, fame one and then fame two and there's a lot of push, there's a lot of media buzz in terms of push for the electric. And what is that specific gap which still exists between government and private players to make that transition to electric actually happen? One word for that, procrastination. Why I say this fairly bluntly is because smarty as India's first electric mobility company came into being in 2014. This was a time when the IPI was still not formed. This was a time when fame was not there. This was a time when the only reference to electric mobility was Tesla. It was the only global technology. And smarty came into being back then with a business model that worked even in absence of fame or government push. So we have been a firm believer of the fact that when people stop procrastinating and believe that A, there is business sense. And B, that there is tremendous amount of social good that needs to be done. By social good I don't mean in a fancy corporate social responsibility field but social good in a sense of really tackling the public health crisis that all our major cities in the country are facing because of the air pollution. When you combine both of those two then in my mind there cannot be any excuse. So from a smarty perspective we are fairly pleased with whatever the state government have done so far. What the state government have done so far, there are the steps in the right direction. There are wishes that more and more players have both supply chain side, demand application side, services side, what they are doing. I want to invite insides from India to understand from open motors that how does a VC look at auto tech because it's a heavy Kpex. The gestation periods are quite long unlike a technology aggregator business where there is a clear path. So how does a VC look like and how does capital raising activity happen here because that's essential for growth and expansion. So I'm a team founder and CEO of Open Motors from Silicon Valley and actually that's a very interesting question. VCs are a little bit weird sometimes especially in the valley but they are okay to also burn a lot of money. For example I was recently at the Micro Mobility Conference. There were all the top VCs that invested in these companies like Bird, Lime and also the CEOs of these companies were there. And we were talking about how they burned all the money like hundreds of millions of US dollars and they realized that they had a shitty asset like an e-scooter that just last one month. And with a very bad total cost of ownership, TCO. So basically they realized we have an amazing service that is growing faster than Uber and this is what VC is like. When you see a growth of user adoption that's their sweet spot. And they said okay we need to deploy a lot of these vehicles for a dollar per ride. And they bought it from my, actually I have a friend working there. Anyway they do it for Xiaomi as well. So all the e-scooters are manufactured basically from one company. Anyway they realized after that that was a very heavy capex and very bad TCO decision to use this. They realized that this asset was basically a toy grade asset. So in the end this was surprised actually because they were very okay to have lost so many, to have burned so much money. And said okay we burned hundreds of millions but we realized that people like it. You know this type of, still growing very fast. So now the only thing that actually I think is related to mobility in general is we have to fix the TCO. We have to optimize the TCO which will fix automatically the business model. So to fix the TCO basically you have to engineer better the asset. Design and engineer better this. Because even cars, I mean for wheeler, we've been doing cars for Volkswagen, Maserati, super fancy, beautiful things, super performance. In the end it's all about perceived obsolescence and planned obsolescence. We know that people will drive maximum two hours a day on average. We don't want to make cars less lonely because we want people to buy more cars. Actually the same thing for the e-scooters, they're using the same principle. And now services are using this with a completely different approach. Usually ten times look more than a normal private usage. And so VCs are really into now understanding what people want first. Second it's okay to lose money is a big test for the first rounds. Whoever can fix the asset then it might be the leader. So they bet on teams. But I believe actually this is an interesting thing that the CAPEX problem goes beyond investors. Right now in the four wheel space we know that Uber, Vola, Grab, DD all together combined. Combined they need several millions of cars that are engineered for services. Many companies are trying to do this. We are also trying to do it. But combining all these numbers together and multiplying for an average cost of $10,000 or $15,000 per vehicle, it's a trillion dollar problem. Even SoftBank, Vision Fund, they don't have that money to support this CAPEX, right? So these companies are trying to find different source of capital, not only from VCs. You have introduced these new age vehicles to India. We never had these miracles, right? And neither did we have those goods. What business opportunity is how do you see that this segment is going to pan out? Till now we've been only used to two wheelers and three wheelers. So people who have been to China, they will not be surprised seeing a miracle. Because China, if you go there, everyone is on a small little scooters like that. The reason we went with that thesis, we thought that, just like my colleague said, that Uber, Vola, Grab, DD, they are looking for a new type of vehicle which is created for shared mobility. And we realized that problem early on where we were clear that our country will never need those standing scooters, that toys went for sure, not built for commercial grade. And those activists and Hondas and schoolies, they probably also have their own set of challenges. They're not created for shared mobility. So we spent close to nine months of pregnancy to figure out what is required for this country's electric mobility to happen. And we found several interesting products, theories, frameworks, and finally liked the product which we sold. And you'll be very surprised that consumers are very happy to see that, to ride it. More than that, my ops team is also very happy that they're saying, okay, there's no maintenance. This is like practically nothing to be broken. And this is where I think the argument of TCO comes into picture. Where we are not basically into a race of bringing a cool looking fancy vehicle, but also it should last long. It should be easy to maintain. And our approach was actually driven from the fact that we'll bring one SKU and get the huge volume so that we get economies of scale in buying it. And then post that repair, maintenance, supply chain of that is very expensive. So we actually have been able to find a sweet spot. So we're very happy about that. And we think even in future, probably that will be the template that will work for us. So it's a matter of time. People will say, yes, it is not awkward. In fact, nine out of 10 people when they say miracle, they say, wow, this is cool. And this was one big risk we took as a company. What if people say that, hey, this is a toy or this is some old school stuff. So we did some interesting stuff on that. And I think it's a mindset change. People probably will figure it out that this is most practical thing, which makes EV mobility possible in a practical manner. Profitable business model, because from what I know, the current two-wheelers are very low in the right-side segment, are probably very low on utilization of the asset. Because probably of the nature. Throw us some insights on how do you create a path to profitability in an over-crowded two-wheeler segment. So I'm Padmanabhan. I'm the co-founder and COO of Vogo. Vogo is a two-wheeler shared mobility platform, which is operating out of Bangalore, Hyderabad and a few more cities in Karnataka. So very interesting views shared by Tim and Amit as well. So first of all, on Tim's views, investors in the valley I think put a lot of money and see what happens. But I think Indian investors are not that very generous. It would have been great if they were. So the kind of demand that you see for shared mobility products beat any form factor. I mean, we'll go to the TCO later. But for that, the demand that is there in the city because the city infrastructure and public transportation in any of the cities in India is broken, right? B-tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, it is completely broken. If you think about public transportation, there is a bus which are flying in the cities and then there are metros that are coming up in the cities today. And if you think about the price point of a bus or a metro, it's at 2, 3 rupees a kilometer, right? And if you think what is the next best option for a customer in terms of not owning his vehicle is an auto which is upwards of 15 rupees a kilometer and then no taxis and cabs which are 25 rupees a kilometer. So now between 3 rupees a kilometer and 15 rupees a kilometer there is a huge wide space, right? And people need to commute. And 70% of all trips in India are less than 10 kilometers, right? So these are all commute short trips. So how do you get people from point A to point B if essentially everything is broken, right? So then people basically came and that's why two-wheeler market exists in India. I mean, India sells 2 crore two-wheelers a year. So that is exactly why the two-wheeler market exists and the two-wheeler kind of works out, you know, on their average use is 06, 7 rupees a kilometer. That's why people buy and they use. But do we need so many two-wheelers in India? No, right? Like in the sense that Bangalore alone has 50 lakh registered two-wheelers, right? 50 lakh registered two-wheelers. And Bangalore alone in a day some 30-35 lakh two-wheelers apply in Bangalore transporting 35 lakh people. But 6,500 buses in Bangalore transport 55 lakh people, right? So I mean, you have congested the entire city just because we did not have the right infrastructure in place between those price points. And that is exactly what shared mobility is trying to solve, beat any form factor. Could be a two-wheeler, could be a miracle, could be an auto, an auto rickshaw, whatever it is, right? So I think the pent-up demand in each and every city in India is very, very high for this product. If you think about it, India does 350 million trips in a day, right? That's the market size of this business, the transportation business. Out of that, Ola and Ober put together two, three million trips. That's just one percent of the market, right? So you, I mean, think about the problem and they are billion-dollar companies. But you're saying that the rest 342 million trips are still broken. So that is really the market size that you're actually trying to solve. And that is why I think shared mobility is going to be a huge driver of anything and everything in a city and in India, right? So then having established that now, we're wrong about, okay, what is the total cost of ownership? Why aren't all of the business getting funded? What is the problem? I mean, like in the valley, yes. In India, not so much, right? So I mean, I think Indian startups in general, like the valley has given a lot of return on investments for any startups in the valley, right? Like every startup would be for Facebook. Anybody has grown out of it. But Indian startups have really not attained that kind of, you know, fame, right? Like they've not converted so much in the Indian scenario. So India has more time, right? It needs more time, startups needs more time given how we are as a country. So having said that, so the money is also very hard to come by. Otherwise, we would have had 15, 20, 30, 40 shared mobility companies funded today because given the size of the market and the opportunity that is available, that is supposed to have happened. So I think that is one of the reasons and Indian investors, I know this because I've tried raising money with the rest two, three rounds of money to now. And typically the Indian investors are very, very smart. They realize that this is an asset-based business. They know that if the asset were to give away, the business goes kaput. And there is nothing that anybody can do. As you said, you need trillions of dollars to solve the problem and even Softbank question fund might not have that money. So Indian investors do realize very, very clearly that asset-based businesses if the asset is not sturdy enough, then the business does not make sense. So that is where they start the entire conversation. So I think that is really the reason why you don't see a lot of startups funded very easily because the asset question in itself is a big, large question to answer. And then asset questions are not answered over a meeting or in a day. It is answered over a period of time. It is answered in a year. It is answered in two years. It is answered in three years because the asset will sweat it out and then prove for itself at scale that it lasts on that. We need a strong, sturdy product and a good supply chain support so that mobility shared mobility, connected mobility can be let's call it successful. I want to invite Akash to get inside from you. How are you approaching this? I am sure you are also exposed to similar problems or challenges for the lack of a better word. Thank you everyone. I am Akash. I am the co-founder and CEO of Mobisi. Very interesting discussion so far. One thing we have to realize that electric mobility that what we are talking about it is happening in India it is a new age industry. It is a generational leap that we are all taking. Even government is pushing over the next three years that the entire fleet of two-wheelers should be electric. So it is a big generational leap that we are talking about. And we being startups obviously we are the ones who are solving problems. That is why there is a startup. And the beauty is that while there is China which is a little ahead of us but most of the rest of the world is moving electric as India is moving electric. So yes there is a problem of hardware. Yes there is a problem of software. Yes there is a problem of battery swapping charging. We don't know the answers yet. There is a lot of government support or subsidies or policies that are all claimed for. But yesterday I was having a similar discussion where when we tried to pinpoint that what is it that we need right now. Nobody had a clear answer that we need this today because everything is in motion somewhere or the other I think there are more such forums happening on electric mobility called by government where the transport minister of a state or city is calling all the stakeholders in a meeting or Mr. Amitabh Khan from Neethi IO calling all the stakeholders that we need to go electric what do you guys need. And they are taking notes. They are creating WhatsApp groups that what are the things that are needed for us to go electric. So there is intent and there is definitely a lot of questions being thrown at different levels. But if you ask me since it is a moving wheel and we are on that wheel so we are solving the problems because we need to move in that direction and we cannot leave that bus right now if we sit down and then take two years and then create the best of vehicles we don't have that liberty because otherwise we will be left behind. So yes it is interesting space where we are in and which is all exciting that country has a challenge to move electric and why electric. Because as Paddy rightly said that there are so many trips happening 300 million trips out of them I would contextualize to our last mile problem. So there is you know 150 million trips which are less than 4 km. So about 50% of those trips are less than 4 km and these are metro to office office to home delivery folks do that you know the food delivery guys and all of that. How can we convert these trips which are half of the trips which are happening into electric possibly. And if you are able to do that at least there will be less congestion which is definitely needed. The AQI levels are where you know these are hazardous you know in other countries it would be a red alert but we have Indians we are religions. I mean we have tendency to you know recuperate in each and every form of factor but yes that is why electric is needed that if we don't do it today then tomorrow is going to be really difficult from a survival standpoint right. So that's my two cents on this that we need to go electric we need to do it in the shared way because that works makes business sense and that's what customers also need we've seen that how Olas and Ubers people have moved from car ownership to you know the right share or you know shared mobility so yeah exciting times and hopes are all you know happening here.