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Startup Mantra: Aiming big impact with compact cars
Pune-based Vayve Mobility is launching a small 2-seater EV car that will help solve drivers’ woes and more…
Pune: Last year India saw a 49% growth in sales of electric vehicles (EV), and this year it is expected to increase by 66%, according to the industry reports. Exciting numbers for anyone in the EV business. But this space is largely taken up by the big daddies of Indian auto led by the Tatas at 72% market share of four-wheeler EVs in India, followed by Morris Garages at 10.8% and Mahindra at 9%, according to the data released by the market analyst firm Canalys.
In the small slice of about 10% market, enters a startup – Vayve — who will be launching their four-wheeler Eva, at the Bharat Auto Expo on January 17, 2025. Audacious, you may say for a startup to get into the ring against companies with deep pockets. So, what is it that Eva can do, either differently or better, that a Tata or an MG EV cannot?
A lot, actually. If you drive on Pune’s roads, you must be rather exasperated with the traffic jams, the parking issues and manoeuvring your car in the thick of peak office rush hour. And as the size of cars gets bigger and better, Nilesh Bajaj and his co-founders Saurabh Mehta, Ankita Jain and Vilas Deshpande thought therein lay the pain point of city drivers. The ever-increasing size of a car makes manoeuvring that much more difficult.
Nilesh said, “We have been the victims of city traffic and have commuted from Saki-Vihar to Andheri in Mumbai for seven years. And while I drove a Volkswagen-Vento, I know just how many times I wished my car was small and could manoeuvre through little spaces that a traffic jam sometimes gives you. So, we thought why not build a small car for just two people. Yes, there are bikes, but they are not comfortable over distances, have certain risks and so on. But what if you had the comfort of a big car, but small sized so driving through city traffic became a bit easy?”
Nilesh and Saurabh are both graduates from IIT Bombay and had developed the meter used to measure TRPs (target rating point) for the Broadcast Audience Research Council. “We had designed the software and hardware and used to get them manufactured by an EMS (electronics manufacturing services) company,” Nilesh said. While the going was good for the duo, they as students always dreamt of having their own manufacturing unit that built products they created. Add to that the traffic woes and Eva was just waiting to happen.
In 2020, Nilesh and Saurabh began work on their small EV car, exclusively built for city driving. Besides their own driving woes, they took note of other factors as well.
“In India, generally the middle class will buy a car that can accommodate the whole family of generally four or maybe five members. So, this was not our buyer audience. But there are families that buy a second car to drive kids to school or to go shopping or to the clinic. Or there are college students who value safety and do not want to risk two-wheeler driving in the city. Or simply going to the office daily in rush hour. Our two-seater car is for them,” he said.
Lessons from the past
A small four-wheeler EV car isn’t really new to Pune. About two decades ago, Reva Electric had built a small EV to no success. It was later bought over by Mahindra. Is Eva going to repeat the same mistake by building a small car?
Nilesh said, “Reva was a car that was ahead of its time. In those days, batteries were prohibitively expensive. Those lead batteries could not generate too much energy and lasted for about few 100 cycles of charging. They were very heavy, driving that car was no fun at all and, in fact, they cost more than a petrol car!
“Today our batteries are lithium ferro phosphate and very efficient in terms of storing power. They last longer, in fact the Tatas give a guarantee of 800 cycles of charging and if one charge gives you 200 kms your battery comes with a warranty of 160,000 kms approx.
“Given the technological advancements, it is now possible to give you a great car that offers as many features that a petrol car does, as well as helps you save energy, something that is driving more and more people’s purchase decisions.”
There is another small car experience from history – the Nano. Built specially by Ratan Tata of the Tata Group for families that were forced to travel on a two-wheeler, the Nano was meant to be a car that could be affordable for the common man. But that too did not work. How does Nilesh, despite his good intentions, expect a small car to work where even a family graduating from two-wheeler to four-wheeler rejected it?
“Generally, a small car means a cheap car. And cheap means fewer features where you are expected to make a few sacrifices. But we are saying a clear no. It is a myth that a small car on the outside means small and cramped up on the inside. Ours is a small car meant to help you drive and park easily. But it offers you all the comforts of a big car and more; leg room, space to keep your briefcase, bags, coffee mug, it has a beverage cooler, efficient air-conditioning, reverse cameras, everything that you can get in a high-end car. It’s just that the car doesn’t eat up too much space on the road, and offers you every comfort as driver and passenger.”
But its more than just comfort. The Eva is loaded with a solar panel on the roof that charges the battery whilst you are driving or are parked in sunlight. “This solar charging can provide you with 12 kms extra, over and above your battery charge. And based on the variant, our battery can provide from 125 kms to 250 kms per charge. Compared to a petrol car that say gives 20kms per litre that will cost you ₹5/km, Eva has a running cost of 50 paise per km.”
The truth of building a car
“When we started to develop Eva the cost of the battery was 40% of the car. Now it is 30%. Earlier the lithium batteries had a different chemistry, that is they had nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) which are rarer elements than lithium. But the newer batteries do not require these minerals, they have iron, and lithium is about 4% part of the whole battery. We are seeing many more Indian companies getting into the manufacture of lithium-iron batteries that has been among others, a cause for the drop in prices,” he said.
To build a production-ready version of their car, Nilesh and his co-founders collaborated with Tier-1 suppliers and a highly experienced core team across design, engineering, marketing and finance. They engaged senior industry experts in styling and design, vehicle design and integration, automotive body-in-white (BIW) engineering, ergonomics, computer-aided engineering (CAE) and vehicle dynamics, design for manufacturing and manufacturing planning.
In addition to this, user feedback has been constantly integrated into design. Nilesh said, “We have been refining Eva’s mechanical and electrical design over three engineering prototypes in the last four years. We received overwhelming response from customers at the public unveiling in January 2023. The voice-of-customer feedback has been incorporated to improve the product offering. The exterior aesthetics and interior trim are finalised with the pre-production version set to debut at the Delhi Auto Expo 2025.”
As of now, they have an R&D and development centre in Pune where they’ve built their launch model. Currently, they are evaluating different cities’ offering to build their manufacturing unit. “Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana and Tamil Nadu seem likely centres though we have to also base our decision on supplier synergies,” he said.
Competition
Despite being a small fish in a sea full of sharks, Nilesh is very clear about his car and the market. “Eva occupies a unique position by focusing on a new category of quadricycles, with no direct competitors in India. While other startups like Wings EV and Gensol have introduced prototypes, they are not yet in production. Established players like MG Comet and Tata Tiago cater to the traditional M1 car category (vehicles with not more than eight seats, including the driver’s) and are not purpose-built for city commuting needs. Hence, we do not have direct head-on competition with legacy OEMs (original equipment manufacturer).
“Our unfair advantage lies in born-EV platform development, able to scale to multiple vehicles with no legacy constraints. Electric car technology has a fundamental advantage of 50% BOM (bill of materials) cost, dominated by electronics and software where we have core domain mastery. Vayve Mobility has deep understanding of Indian customers when compared to brands importing Chinese designs.
Money makes it happen
Eva has been bootstrapped till 2022. “We invested ₹3.5 crore of founders’ money and then received ₹7 crore from angel investors across India, US, Middle East and Singapore. We are aiming to raise ₹90 crore to complete engineering, validation and homologation. Funds will be allocated to R&D, team expansion and tooling, reflecting the capital-intensive nature of automotive development,” he said.
Charging the way ahead
Nilesh plans to start with Pune, and Bengaluru and Delhi before moving to the top 10 cities in two or three years, and 50 cities in five years. “We are targeting cities with a population of more than a million,” he said.
But to get anywhere he knows clearly that car sales are dependent on the after sales service. “It is vital for us to build distribution centres and service centres with the launch of our car. With the Expo we are opening up pre-booking of our car which will be delivered in 2026,” he said.
A long wait? “Yes, but for a startup it’s the classic chicken-and-egg story. We don’t have the funds that large companies have to get everything ready and then launch. Even Tesla had funded its operations via pre booking. But that vehicle weighs 2 tonnes which is too much energy to move a person from home to office or elsewhere.”
He is not willing to disclose the price of Eva as of now as it is “too close to the launch”. Here’s hoping this small car makes big inroads in the EV industry.
