'We fell in love with scooter': How Ather originally planned to be an energy distribution company but…

Ather Energy, known for their electric scooters, was not envisioned as a mobility company. It was envisioned as an energy storage and distribution company – in fact that’s how they started till they had to build a scooter to put that battery pack on. That’s how Ather Energy and its sleek scooters went on the road, said Ather Energy CEO Tarun Mehta. 

Mehta said, “We had the idea of building battery packs, which is storage. And we wanted to build a swapping network, which is distribution. This was Ather Energy, the distribution and storage company. And later we were building a scooter on the side to put that battery pack on and we fell in love with the scooter. So we became a vehicle company. We do run a fairly large charging network…in two-wheelers it is the largest fast-charging network in the country.”

Ather Energy CEO was speaking at the WTF is with Nikhil Kamath podcast, hosted by billionaire co-founder of Zerodha. The episode, ‘WTF is Happening with EV?’, featured guests including Mehta, Punit Goyal, co-founder of BluSmart, Chetan Maini, co-founder of SUN Mobility and Suruchi Rao, co-founder of Ossus Biorenewables. 

Mehta said that if one were in the vehicle business, as in they put together a vehicle and sell the vehicle, then getting into the business of charging seems kind of odd – which is in line with the fact that many of its big rivals are not in the charging business. “It is like ‘we sell cars, might as well sell petrol’, but that does not happen, right?” said Mehta. 

Vehicle companies don’t get into charging till they are really forced to, explained Mehta. “We see it differently, we see it synergistically. We want to make the vehicle, and the battery, as well as we want to charge it ourselves too. If you fast charge there then you need storage too. You set up 20 charging stations and that becomes a micro-grid, then you have decentralised power generation and distribution…we have big dreams,” said Mehta.

“If I said my business is to sell vehicles, then thinking charging and thinking battery is kind of not sensible, unless you are forced to. But if I think I am in the business of selling you energy, then the lens changes. Then a few things start making sense,” said Mehta to Kamath. Most of the stuff that Ather does today is really in service of the vehicle that we have to sell, said Mehta, adding that a lot of people can go to their charging stations now. ‘Our charging standard has become the national standard,” said Mehta. 

While Ola has not adopted their standard yet, Hero Vida, Matter Motor, and a bunch of other electric two-wheelers have adopted their standard, mentioned Mehta. 

Also read: 'Sold for $68 million': BluSmart is not founder Punit Goyal's first success story