This was a crucial launch event for e-scooter maker, Ather Energy in Chennai. It let one of its customers from Bangalore take centre-stage after the founder’s address.

“Don’t believe anything that these guys tell you…,” started off the customer on the microphone. In a normal scenario, the communications and marketing teams would break into a cold sweat. After all, the brand had taken its first ride outside Bangalore to explore the market in Chennai. It was obviously that moment to say the right things and follow a well thought out strategic narrative.

But company executives would rather let the customer do the talking without any interruption. Throwing the rule book out of the window has been par for the course at the Bengaluru based Ather Energy. “…these guys always underpromise and over-deliver,” the customer completed his unfinished sentence, much to the relief, and pleasant surprise, of wannabe customers and dealers from Chennai who were at the launch.

Another customer spoke about how he would have run up a fuel bill in excess of INR 44,000 but ended up paying close-to-nothing. This customer is referring to a time when the company ran a subscription plan of INR 700 per month where customers could recharge their batteries at all public infrastructure charging stations of Ather in Bengaluru at zero cost, apart from a host of other services.

If it was so good to be true, then why was this offer discontinued a few months ago? “Then, we hired a CFO,” jokes Ravneet S Phokela, the Harvard-educated chief business officer of Ather Energy.

Old-timers at the company also recall an occasion when they invited 100 customers to the office and the founder-CEO Tarun Mehta laid bare the unlisted company’s cost structure and other key financials in front of them. This was done to justify an unprecedented price hike for the company’s range of EVs.

Or there was another occasion when this set of consumers got access to the vehicle prototypes and even managed to get beta test rides. (Fact of the matter: back then, the company had no legal team to dissuade company executives from putting closely guarded product secrets out in the open.)

Over a period of seven-plus years, the Bengaluru based e-scooter maker has managed to build a strong and engaged community of fans or e-biking enthusiasts without busting the bank. For example, all the 50-odd customers from Bengaluru reportedly paid for their own travel to Chennai during the launch. The company only helped them with logistics support to transport the customer’s personal e-scooters for the launch ride in Chennai.

Circle the clock back to 2015-16, when Ather took baby steps in its brand building efforts, even as the first e-scooter would roll out from its plant only by 2018. At that point in time, the market had other electric scooter brands. But most of them were assembled from parts shipped out of China. Phokela recalls, “When we entered, it was a new category. Normally, when you think of a new category, you assume a clean slate. In this case, it wasn’t.”

As Ather took a few steps back to analyse the situation it saw a few myths that had crept in to affect the category as a whole. “Consumers were judging the category based on the products that they saw. The products they saw weren’t really great. At that point in time, consumers believed buying an electric scooter was a compromise. You buy it to save money, but you just sign up for a bad product. The assembled products would not scale up an incline or they had a bad build quality. They were really not a great place,” says Phokela.

Ather executives had their tasks cut out. They first had to dispel some myths and say this is just not a compromise, but it is the future of the automobile. Hence category education and category creation was a very important task.

But the company was not in a position of strength to state that convincingly. If the category was seen in a very bad light, here was a brand that nobody had heard about.

Neither did the company have a product to look the customer convincingly in the eye. “At that stage, it didn’t make any sense for us financially and strategically, to spend money on mass media or advertising to bust these myths,” recalls Phokela.

How did the company leap into this brave new world? It started with establishing a very strong connection with a small, but a very enthusiastic set of customers whom we call the early adopters of the community.

One way of reaching this community was through a newsletter sent by the founders (both IITians) on the future of mobility. “That initial base has stayed with us and they have given us benefits even till today,” says Phokela.

Understanding customers was critical, but what Ather Energy did beyond that was in involving them at every step of the company’s journey – including giving them access to prototypes that would otherwise be guarded zealously, in the business of mobility.

“The idea was to make these people genuinely believe that they are insiders. They’re part of the company and play a role in shaping and building the company,” he stated. The customers soon started visiting the Ather Energy headquarters every first Saturday of the month. There was nothing on offer –no freebies. The customers just came to chat, heard from the company’s top bosses about the direction this company was taking and got access to beta test rides on the prototype vehicles. “To the best of our knowledge, there is no automotive company that will get into the customer feedback, so early on in the life cycle of the product,” says Phokela.

All of the above gave rise to a perception that Ather is an honest company, or even when they mess up they will own up responsibility and apologise.

Phokela says there were enough examples on public platforms, either on Twitter or otherwise, on its forum, where it publicly accepted mistakes, or gave customers a valid reason for its actions.

Since the early days, honesty and transparency have become the company’s cornerstones, say executives. “At that time, the stakes were low. But even now with investors and a board, this continues to be a very defining part of our personality and our story,” says Phokela.

From the humble beginnings as a newsletter to other channels like WhatsApp and other social media channels, the community strength has grown from a few-1000 customers to a little under two-lakh people who are active on that platform today. And not all of them are Ather owners. The forum is run by moderators who are nominated folks and the conversation is about every EV on topics that include new launches, discussions about rival brands, why Ather is dragging its feet in opting for the latest technology and so on.

When the company had put its first scooters out, a few years back, all customers had access to the contact numbers of the top company executives. Many of them are still in touch, says Phokela.

To capitalise on the early excitement around the product, the company created a community visiting card for its early set of customers. These visiting cards could be distributed to people who were keen to know about the e-scooter. These cards were distributed to a whole bunch of people in the community. The card also carried a link to the forum where people can go and read reviews of the product, there was a link to the website and this helped in recruiting more people into the community.

Being a part of the community is beneficial, especially for Ather owners. For example, when there’s a software update being released, anybody in the community can sign up for a beta version access, and get access to a feature before it goes out to the world.

“We want to engage meaningfully, which would definitely mean that our opportunity is finite. Though in theory, we have engaged with a large number of people, we would rather go out and physically meet people every month or go to experience centres and hold events. We believe that’s a far greater and better usage of our time to engage our community, than be happy with the sheer brute force of numbers that I have so many followers on Instagram or X,” says Phokela.

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• Updated On Nov 15, 2023 at 08:14 AM IST

This was a crucial launch event for e-scooter maker, Ather Energy in Chennai. It let one of its customers from Bangalore take centre-stage after the founder’s address.

“Don’t believe anything that these guys tell you…,” started off the customer on the microphone. In a normal scenario, the communications and marketing teams would break into a cold sweat. After all, the brand had taken its first ride outside Bangalore to explore the market in Chennai. It was obviously that moment to say the right things and follow a well thought out strategic narrative.

But company executives would rather let the customer do the talking without any interruption. Throwing the rule book out of the window has been par for the course at the Bengaluru based Ather Energy. “…these guys always underpromise and over-deliver,” the customer completed his unfinished sentence, much to the relief, and pleasant surprise, of wannabe customers and dealers from Chennai who were at the launch.

Another customer spoke about how he would have run up a fuel bill in excess of INR 44,000 but ended up paying close-to-nothing. This customer is referring to a time when the company ran a subscription plan of INR 700 per month where customers could recharge their batteries at all public infrastructure charging stations of Ather in Bengaluru at zero cost, apart from a host of other services.

If it was so good to be true, then why was this offer discontinued a few months ago? “Then, we hired a CFO,” jokes Ravneet S Phokela, the Harvard-educated chief business officer of Ather Energy.

Old-timers at the company also recall an occasion when they invited 100 customers to the office and the founder-CEO Tarun Mehta laid bare the unlisted company’s cost structure and other key financials in front of them. This was done to justify an unprecedented price hike for the company’s range of EVs.

Or there was another occasion when this set of consumers got access to the vehicle prototypes and even managed to get beta test rides. (Fact of the matter: back then, the company had no legal team to dissuade company executives from putting closely guarded product secrets out in the open.)

Over a period of seven-plus years, the Bengaluru based e-scooter maker has managed to build a strong and engaged community of fans or e-biking enthusiasts without busting the bank. For example, all the 50-odd customers from Bengaluru reportedly paid for their own travel to Chennai during the launch. The company only helped them with logistics support to transport the customer’s personal e-scooters for the launch ride in Chennai.

Circle the clock back to 2015-16, when Ather took baby steps in its brand building efforts, even as the first e-scooter would roll out from its plant only by 2018. At that point in time, the market had other electric scooter brands. But most of them were assembled from parts shipped out of China. Phokela recalls, “When we entered, it was a new category. Normally, when you think of a new category, you assume a clean slate. In this case, it wasn’t.”

As Ather took a few steps back to analyse the situation it saw a few myths that had crept in to affect the category as a whole. “Consumers were judging the category based on the products that they saw. The products they saw weren’t really great. At that point in time, consumers believed buying an electric scooter was a compromise. You buy it to save money, but you just sign up for a bad product. The assembled products would not scale up an incline or they had a bad build quality. They were really not a great place,” says Phokela.

Ather executives had their tasks cut out. They first had to dispel some myths and say this is just not a compromise, but it is the future of the automobile. Hence category education and category creation was a very important task.

But the company was not in a position of strength to state that convincingly. If the category was seen in a very bad light, here was a brand that nobody had heard about.

Neither did the company have a product to look the customer convincingly in the eye. “At that stage, it didn’t make any sense for us financially and strategically, to spend money on mass media or advertising to bust these myths,” recalls Phokela.

How did the company leap into this brave new world? It started with establishing a very strong connection with a small, but a very enthusiastic set of customers whom we call the early adopters of the community.

One way of reaching this community was through a newsletter sent by the founders (both IITians) on the future of mobility. “That initial base has stayed with us and they have given us benefits even till today,” says Phokela.

Understanding customers was critical, but what Ather Energy did beyond that was in involving them at every step of the company’s journey – including giving them access to prototypes that would otherwise be guarded zealously, in the business of mobility.

“The idea was to make these people genuinely believe that they are insiders. They’re part of the company and play a role in shaping and building the company,” he stated. The customers soon started visiting the Ather Energy headquarters every first Saturday of the month. There was nothing on offer –no freebies. The customers just came to chat, heard from the company’s top bosses about the direction this company was taking and got access to beta test rides on the prototype vehicles. “To the best of our knowledge, there is no automotive company that will get into the customer feedback, so early on in the life cycle of the product,” says Phokela.

All of the above gave rise to a perception that Ather is an honest company, or even when they mess up they will own up responsibility and apologise.

Phokela says there were enough examples on public platforms, either on Twitter or otherwise, on its forum, where it publicly accepted mistakes, or gave customers a valid reason for its actions.

Since the early days, honesty and transparency have become the company’s cornerstones, say executives. “At that time, the stakes were low. But even now with investors and a board, this continues to be a very defining part of our personality and our story,” says Phokela.

From the humble beginnings as a newsletter to other channels like WhatsApp and other social media channels, the community strength has grown from a few-1000 customers to a little under two-lakh people who are active on that platform today. And not all of them are Ather owners. The forum is run by moderators who are nominated folks and the conversation is about every EV on topics that include new launches, discussions about rival brands, why Ather is dragging its feet in opting for the latest technology and so on.

When the company had put its first scooters out, a few years back, all customers had access to the contact numbers of the top company executives. Many of them are still in touch, says Phokela.

To capitalise on the early excitement around the product, the company created a community visiting card for its early set of customers. These visiting cards could be distributed to people who were keen to know about the e-scooter. These cards were distributed to a whole bunch of people in the community. The card also carried a link to the forum where people can go and read reviews of the product, there was a link to the website and this helped in recruiting more people into the community.

Being a part of the community is beneficial, especially for Ather owners. For example, when there’s a software update being released, anybody in the community can sign up for a beta version access, and get access to a feature before it goes out to the world.

“We want to engage meaningfully, which would definitely mean that our opportunity is finite. Though in theory, we have engaged with a large number of people, we would rather go out and physically meet people every month or go to experience centres and hold events. We believe that’s a far greater and better usage of our time to engage our community, than be happy with the sheer brute force of numbers that I have so many followers on Instagram or X,” says Phokela.

• Published On Nov 15, 2023 at 08:14 AM IST

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