Massive Mobility: India’s EV Charging SuperHero Ecosystem for the 2 and 3 -Wheeler Market
CEO, Shailesh Vickram Singh, before starting Massive Mobility, has been a VC with SeedFund (backed by marquee LPs like Google, CDC, Wellcome Trust etc.) Shailesh moved out of tech VC space in 2018 to focus on solving air pollution and climate change by applying VC framework of scalable innovation driven through capital.
In course of finding solutions to air pollution and climate change, Shailesh and team took a deep dive into e-mobility and discovered that more than 2 million EVs worth $4 billion have been sold in India. While there is huge excitement about Tesla and EV trucks, there has been a silent revolution in micro mobility space where almost 15% market share has been captured by these slow-moving short range EVs.
Given the fact there was no formal credit available to these EVs which are being bought by poorest of poor, Shailesh set up Massive Mobility in 2019 with a finance first approach to solve the EV problem and build relationship OEMs, battery manufacturers, government and policy makers.
This deep dive in EV brought out the biggest issue related to battery performance and eventually battery charging. Batteries which almost make up to 50% of the cost of an EV and hence there is very strong correlation between battery life and loan performance. However, battery life is a total function of charging quality and almost all of these slow-moving short range EVs do not have any access to proper charging stations as everyone is busy building charging station for cars and a charging station for cars do not serve three wheelers or two-wheeler EVs since India is predominantly a 2 and 3-wheeler country.
This marked discovery led to the pivot towards offering of charging as a service model focused on EV two wheelers and EV three wheelers.
Interview with CEO Shailesh Vickram Singh
AV: What are the pain points for battery performance for the current DC market for the 2 and 3-wheeler market in India?
SVS: Today when everyone thinks of charging, they think of DC fast chargers and charging stations for cars etc. However as of today none of the three wheelers (selling close to 20,000 per month) can be charged on fast charging while majority of two wheelers can’t handle DC fast charging. So, the real need to a stable and consistent DC charging for these set of vehicles and India is not a car or truck country but India is a two-wheeler and three- wheeler country. There are not proper charging stations, a lot of non-authorized charging points have emerged where the quality of power is not where it should be and there is huge fluctuation in voltage and current. This leads to not only poor charging quality but also high damage to the batteries and a chance of over heating and thus sharp decline in battery life. The other problem is about discovery of these charging points as well as issues related to online booking. So overall charging scenario is very broken where EV owners are forced to drive in a small area only where he or she is very well aware of the charging points. With Massive Mobility, charging is now one can not only discover charging points but can also one can book online and pay seamlessly through UPI.
AV: Your competitive advantage is to build relationships with OEMs such as Hero Electric and not only have land share in India but mind share with the consumer with a SAAS model on their mobile apps, how does this help MM increase market share?
SVS: Partnership with OEMs is a win-win for all stakeholders which is the OEMs, Massive Mobility and end customer. The single question for every EV potential buyer is where he / she will charge their vehicle and this partnership takes away this uncertainty from the mind of customer as we deploy chargers on demand.
As more and more EV vehicles are getting bought, more and more of our chargers will start appearing at housing complexes, malls, shopping centers, local markets. This will give us early mover advantage and will give a sense of relief to every EV owner. Once we have a fair share of charging nodes deployed, we expect not only existing OEMs but even new OEMs to come and partner with us. This will help us to increase our market share.
AV: There is no other local competition focusing on the B2C space or the OEM, why is this the case and what is your MOAT with respect to logistic routes from fleet operators?
SVS: There are lot of startups focusing on this market but Massive Mobility has been able to form partnerships early with leading OEMs and fleet operators. These partnerships are a huge advantage and gives us good moat.
Though I believe that the only moat in any business is customer obsession and give the end users a friction free smooth experience where they stop thinking about charging at all. Hence while, we are going ahead with doing partnerships with OEMs, Fleet operators and E-commerce players, the core focus is to create a friction free charging experience.
AV: The Government scheme under Fame II has been very supportive to spur demand from consumers for EV adoption including no licensing permits for EVs, tax benefits etc. Estimates predict EV penetration of 80% of two and three-wheelers by 2030. 1 Is this realistic and if not, what other measures can be implemented to increase EV adoption?
SVS: India today sells around 20 million bikes and with all incentives, the cost of EVs is at par with ICE engine bike and operating cost is almost 70% lower. If we see transition to E-bikes in China, this 70% transition to e-bikes will happen much sooner than 2030 in India and this is the single most important factor for clean air in Delhi sky.
AV: What is your strategy in India over the next 5 years?
SVS: Deploy deploy and deploy and make customers happy by capturing market share as we are the only EV charging company focusing on the end consumer or OEMs.
[1] Niti Aayog & Rocky Mountain Institute: India’s Electric Mobility Transformation: Progress to Date and Future Opportunities, 2019,8