Arun Vinayak has gone from building Ather as its CPO to turning his focus to building the infrastructure to support the EV boom in the country. Now Exponent plans to expand, but sustainably, keeping an eye on unit economics and profitability
From Day Zero, it was a chicken-and-egg problem. Back in 2014, Arun Vinayak was busy tackling the first part of the equation: Chicken. “Nobody believed in electric vehicles (EVs),” recalls the IIT-Madras grad, who was the founding partner and chief product officer at Ather. “In fact, nobody even believed that we could make EVs.” And the scepticism was valid for a bunch of reasons.
First, for a country that has grown up on petrol and diesel, EVs were alien. They were extra-terrestrial objects. Second, the product lacked credibility because it was not backed by a brand. So even when EVs started to sound credible, the whole idea that an EV can be better than legacy fuel—in terms of technology, speed, comfort, efficiency and quality—was an incredible thing to think of. “Starting up on EVs was considered a sure-shot failure,” recalls Vinayak. Third, in top cities where petrol pumps could be spotted as easily as a Domino’s delivery bike, the absence of EV charging stations added fuel to the belief that EVs won’t work in India. “Where and how will you charge?” was the right question to ask. Vinayak and his team, though, were busy feeding the chicken. Six years later, there was no question mark on EVs. By 2020, Ather established itself as a quality leader.