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Electric Scooter Maker Ather Energy Aims To Be Unit-Level Profitable In Three Years

Smart electric scooter-maker Ather Energy wants to sell 1 lakh units in the next three years.

(Source: Ather Energy)
(Source: Ather Energy)

Smart electric scooter-maker Ather Energy wants to sell 1 lakh units in the next three years and expects to earn a profit on every unit sold by then.

“We believe in the next three years we would be unit-level profitable and in about three to four years we would have an Ebitda-level profitability,” Tarun Mehta, founder and chief executive officer of Ather Energy, told BloombergQuint.

The five-year-old startup, which recently launched its flagship scooters—Ather 450 and Ather 340—expects to lose money on every unit sold until it ramps up production to around 50,000 units a year, Mehta said.

The company is planning to roll out around 2,000 vehicles from its Whitefield plant in Bengaluru in the first phase. “By the end of this year, we want to churn out 200-250 vehicles every week, and by next year we want to churn out 600 units a week,” Mehta said.

The indigenously-designed scooters were launched a little over two years after the company showcased its first product in February 2016.

Ather Energy has also built an extensive charging infrastructure across Bengaluru and controls retail and aftersales—a model similar to that of Tesla’s. So far, the company has deployed charging grids in 17 locations in Bengaluru and aims to extend it to 30 in the next few months. “The idea is that you are never 4 kilometers away from a nearby charging point,” Mehta said.

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Arther 450, which is visually similar to the 340 variant, has a range of 75 kilometers on a single charge with a top speed of 80 kilometres an hour. Arther 340 has a range of 60 kilometers on a single charge with a top speed of 70 km per hour.

But with a price tag of Rs 1,09,750 for the Ather 340 and Rs 1,24,750 for the 450 variant, it’s more expensive than any petrol scooter in India currently.

Electric Scooter Maker Ather Energy Aims To Be Unit-Level Profitable In Three Years

The Road Map Ahead

Ather Energy will compete with the likes of Hero Electric’s electric scooter AXL-HE20. The yet-to-be-launched two-wheeler is expected to have a top speed of 85 km per hour and a range of 110 kilometers on a single charge. The price of the vehicle, however, is yet to be announced.

So far, the startup has raised around $40 million from Hero MotoCorp, Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal and Tiger Global, according to Crunchbase, which aggregates information on startups.

The company expects to target the masses in the next three years with more variants and is also looking to launch a smart electric bike, Mehta said.