Startup Mantra: Boosting biz of rickshaw owners, drivers, the EV way

Electromotion E-Vidyut Vehicles is dedicated to providing retrofitment services for internal combustion engine autorickshaws

Pune: Hailing from tier 2 or tier 3 cities, Pulkit Jain and his friends, much like many college students, relied on overcrowded and fuel-wise inefficient shared-autorickshaws for their daily commute to the college in Ranchi. Engaging in conversations with the drivers during these rides left them curious about various factors affecting their daily income. A few years down the road, a problem statement from the IT ministry prompted Pulkit to reevaluate the challenges faced by these drivers, scrutinise the business model of shared-autorickshaws, and contemplate potential solutions through electrification of these vehicles.

(From left) Electromotion E-Vidyut co-founders Bishwajeet Kumar, Gaurav Kumar Singh, Pulkit Jain and Surya Pratap Singh. (HT)

The contemplation spurred Pulkit and his three college friends into action, leading to setting up the Electromotion E-Vidyut Vehicles—an EV startup dedicated to providing retro-fitment services for internal combustion engine (ICE) autorickshaws.

“A rickshaw driver invests his savings in buying the vehicle, and asking them to scrap it for a new electric vehicle does not make sense. There is also a sentimental value attached to the vehicle. Some drivers take permits and rickshaws on rent, and must shell out a significant amount of their daily income towards it. We found that the number of such rickshaws and drivers is high in India. This problem can be solved with a little intervention. It is a good proposition to convert the ICE vehicle into an electric vehicle by just using our ‘retrokit’,” said Pulkit Jain.

“A few years back, convincing rickshaw owners and drivers was a tough task. Various financing models and nudge from the government in terms of subsidies have helped in encouraging them to converting rickshaws from ICE to EVs. We have recently got the certification from Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) for our ‘RetroKit’ which will allow us to scale up our installations and operations on a large scale,” he said.

STPI MOTION

Pulkit and his friends moved to Pune in 2020 where they got incubated at the STPI (Software Technology Parks of India) MOTION incubator in Bhosari. “STPI MOTION has a good EV testing and lab facility. We have our prototyping, development and manufacturing work done at the incubator while the marketing and outreach activities are carried out from offices in Raipur. Pune being an automotive hub, it was much easier to do prototype and we had about six iterations of our product followed by road tests. In June 2023, we started our pilot production plant which we call as ‘Retro factory’ spread over 2,500 square feet in Bhosari,” Pulkit said.

“As of today, we have six vehicles for pilot testing and have clocked over 23,000 kilometre on-road data from pilot tests, besides ARAI certifications,” he said.

“Ideally speaking, Pune should have been the first place to have all EV autorickshaws. However, misunderstandings on part of the auto unions regarding fares have had an huge impact. Auto unions feared that introduction of EVs will lead government authorities to reduce fares and it will hit the income of rickshaw drivers. Also, the price of new EVs is high and hence they did not prefer switching from ICE to EV. Now, things have changed for better with subsidy push from government authorities for EV adoption,” he said.

Four musketeers

Right after their engineering education at Ranchi, Jharkhand in 2019, Pulkit, Bishwajeet Kumar, Gaurav K Singh, and Surya P Singh started the venture. The quartet had won the Smart India Hackathon in 2018 and realised that their idea has a business potential. Pulkit’s family is into garment business, but he was passionate about engineering and decided to pursue his dream.

Pulkit said, “We came to Raipur in Chhattisgarh as it was near to Ranchi and had an industrial setup. We incorporated a company at Raipur and were working on our first prototype when the Covid-19 pandemic hit us hard. We reached out to all our connects from college and decided to search for incubators for support. Meanwhile, we also approached the college management and offered them to train their students in EV technology. We conducted a lot of student training sessions and hired a few from them for our startup.

“We started the company with ₹1 lakh as seed capital and later raised some funding. The EV training programmes for college students also helped the founding team to get revenue in the initial days. While we were looking for incubators, we came across MOTION, a Centre of Entrepreneurship (CoE) in Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared (ACES) Mobility at Pune, an initiative of Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) under the ministry of electronics and information technology. We got selected at this incubator and things started shaping up.”

Understanding ecosystem

Pulkit and his team have spent the last four years understanding the EV ecosystem and realise a few facts. Pulkit said, “For rickshaw drivers, the challenge is not tech-adoption of EVs, but of replacing existing vehicles with costly new EVs.

“Initially, there were reservations about range of vehicles and charging infrastructure availability, but it has largely been sorted out. The on-road charging infrastructure problem persists to some extent, but we have addressed it by offering a standard socket which enables users to slow-charge vehicles anywhere in four hours. For fast-charging, users can get 60-70 kilometres runway with just one hour charge. Pilot tests regarding this are underway. Unless you demonstrate, the reservations are not addressed. Rickshaw drivers understand that there is a value proposition in switching to EVs and it is much easier to drive electric vehicles.

“Rickshaw drivers face health issues because of pollution as well as vibrations caused due to their old vehicles. Driving a noiseless electric vehicle without any vibration or frequent gear change has added to ease of operations and ease of business of rickshaw drivers. We have also partnered with local shop owners and autorickshaw stands for allowing rickshaw drivers to fast-charge their vehicles. We have installed chargers at local shops, which is providing additional income to owners and rickshaw drivers are also finding it convenient to charge.”

Pilot

Buying a new electric autorickshaw may cost around ₹3.5 lakh which compared to a normal ICE vehicle is not a good value proposition.

“In a city like Pune, with most roads having an inclination or flyovers, a rickshaw uses his vehicle for about 120 kilometres on an average per day. Some drivers have a lease model, where they must pay a part of daily income as rent to the vehicle owner. Some drivers pay for the permit to operate the rickshaw. If we consider an income of ₹500 to ₹600 per day of a rickshaw driver, it is not sustainable even for a family of three to four people. Hence, we suggest switching to electric vehicles for any driver who travels more than 50 kilometres per day in tier 1 cities like Pune. This helps in reducing the operational cost per kilometre and increasing the daily income of drivers,” said Pulkit.

“Since we are in pilot mode right now, we are buying old rickshaws, converting it to electric and providing it on a lease model. We started the process in September 2023 and have seven such units on road as of now operating within a limited area since road transport department permissions are required and are still underway. Once we obtain the requisite permissions we will aim for about 1 lakh kilometres of piloting, before selling it. We expect to start our sales by March 2024. We are doing this to demonstrate that rickshaw drivers will have much lower operation cost for an electric rickshaw as compared to a petrol, diesel or CNG fuel operated rickshaw,” he said.

“We will sell the retrokit directly to rickshaw drivers through our retrofitment centres in partnership with garage owners. We are also looking at tie-ups with banks and financial institutions to reduce the cost burden on rickshaw drivers. If we can get 70 per cent of total amount of kit and vehicle financed, then we expect good response from rickshaw drivers as they will be able to afford the instalments,” Pulkit said.

Market share

Pulkit and his team plans to expand and capture the market in the next few years. “In this financial year, we are planning to expand in two districts. We are also looking to expand in other states where our investors come from and want us to operate. We are exploring those options and will have at least 100 units deployed on road in the next three months. In the next financial year, we plan to have about 5,000 kits retrofitted to autorickshaws. Scaling up does not seem to be a problem for us, as we are going to set up small retrokit factories at different locations. Local talent will be employed at these factories and since it is at micro-level, we do not need huge investments like other automotive factories. A primary assembly unit space where all components will be assembled will work for us,” Pulkit said.

“The retrofitment centres will help local population earn additional income. We plan to partner with existing autorickshaw garage and revamp it to a retrofitment centre. Garage workers will be imparted training to convert rickshaws to EVs and with proper certifications in place, these garage will be deemed as retrofitment centres. We are making sure that transitioning to EVs will not impact the existing jobs of drivers or garage workers,” he said, adding, “we are currently operating in Maharashtra, but will soon enter cities in south India as well our home state Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh in north India. Besides, we will also pitch for any smart city project, including tier 2 cities like Ahmednagar. We have built a capacity and scale of converting 10,000 rickshaws in a year,” Pulkit said.