Majority Of People Think EVs Inferior To ICE Vehicles: Saurav Kumar Talking about the growth and market, Saurav Kumar, founder, Euler says that company focuses on reducing the losses over the period of time.

Whatever you do, it should be able to make a long lasting impact, and those things take time, keeping this thought in mind, Saurav Kumar started Euler Motors in 2018.

"I saw that commercial vehicular pollution led to around 40 per cent contribution in the air pollution.

I started feeling that commercials are going to get electrified the fastest because of the total cost of ownership and we started looking at three wheeler manufacturing before we started building the battery, so that's how it sort of started," Saurav Kumar, Founder & CEO, Euler said when asked about the inspiration behind the brand.

"In 2018, I had already sold my first start-up called Cube26 to Paytm and we were building next start-up. There were a couple of things that became very clear by then that whatever you do it is to be able to make a long lasting impact, those things takes time. And it would take a decade to make impact and at that time I was thinking about what are some of the toughest challenges that exist wherein you can make some of the large impacts," Kumar added.

In his prior experience, Saurav successfully led many robotics and engineering projects on his own. One of these was a machine learning and computer vision system for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles that was regarded by the Office of Naval Research, USA.

Talking about the challenges he said that the biggest challenge was to make the product acceptable to general public as majority of the people think electric vehicle of inferior to ICE vehicles.

"Your vehicle is the biggest purchase somebody can do in their life at least for majority of the Indians. They won't want to buy an inferior to a diesel or a CNG. So that was the other point that within commercial we saw. We thought the vehicle has to be a vehicle. Electric has to be second for a customer who is buying. They're buying to move their loads. They're buying for a particular speed, particular range you can deliver on that. If you can make it better than a diesel or a CNG, that's when people will start thinking from a cost saving perspective," Kumar added.

Performance

When it comes to performance of the vehicles, Saurav said that he came up with highest payload, highest range, and fast charging. He said, "We gave people ability to carry around 688 kgs as compared to traditional three wheelers which could take around 500 kgs. So, roughly 40 per cent more they could carry with this vehicle. The second thing that we did was in electric, most of the vehicles back then in three wheeler cargo could go 60 to 70 kilometers. We came up with 120 kilometer on a single charge. Anybody can charge it at home and then full day they can be running and still it'll not drained."

"We introduced like 50 kilometer in 15 minutes fast charging, so people could plug into any fast charger that is available and get like these fast charge," he added.

Euler started retailing in January 2022 from there the company has now set up close to around 35 showrooms including dealers. Similarly, the service centres have been increasing.

Gap In The Market

Despite major gaps having been already covered by various start-ups including Euler such as the identification of 40 per cent contribution in the air pollution by the commercial vehicles, there are still some gaps prevalent that are needed to be bridged.

Speaking on the matter, Saurav said, "I think the gap today is going to be one on how we can expand to different network and what are the financing options that are available in the market."

The Euler Motors has seen steady growth with 300 vehicles sold in first year which gradually increased to 900 in 2022. The company roughly had sold around 3,700 vehicles as of 2023. "We've been growing at a very high speed. We have deployed so far more than 5,000 vehicles," Kumar said.

On the charging infrastructure part, during the initial year the company was engaged in deploying charging stations and it set up around 200 stations. However, the approach had always been a partnership and it reduced the deployment as Kumar believes that multiple stakeholder has to come in and walk.

"If there's a market where charging station will be required, we will go ahead and deploy. But so far the market partners have been able to set that up. So we have not been actively deploying more and more charging station over the last one year. But if there is a need, we will not hesitate to electrify," he added.

Growth

While the company is growing in terms of product year on year and showing promising market growth, revenue numbers are not so promising when it comes to data available in public domain. In 2023 fiscal year, the company incurred INR 175 crore net loss compared with INR 36 crore during 2022.

"Some of these losses, we definitely would want to restrict over the period of time. It's something I would say where we are focusing a lot on. We definitely don't want to slow down. We would want to push more, but at the same time that we are very disciplined about where we are spending," Kumar said when asked about the plans to reduce these losses.