Understanding Customer Needs Key To Sustainable Business: EV Experts MediaTek and JioThings have jointly launched an indigenously made Internet of Things (IoT) platform for the electric two-wheeler market.

The electric vehicle start-ups have to understand the customer needs to make a mark in this ever evolving industry. One has to understand that rolling out only 200 or 500 vehicle will not make a profitable sustainable business, Uday Narang, founder, OSM said.

"The incumbents have very significant capital at work, they can burn 1000 crores but a start-up cannot do that. It's a diverse country and the demand is there. I think if you build a good product, if you build a sustainable product, you build a sustainable business," Narang added.

He further said, "My only recommendation to all the start-ups in this environment is please forget about round A, B, C, D. If you can't sell more than 30,000 to 40,000 a month, you're not going to be surviving."

He was speaking at a panel in an event where Jio Platforms partnered Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company MediaTek for a foray into the two-wheeler technology platform market.

MediaTek and JioThings have jointly launched an indigenously-made Internet of Things (IoT) platform for the electric two-wheeler market and this will provide Smart Digital Cluster and Smart Module.

Speaking about the customers' interest, Parag Ashok Kumar, Vice President, Engineering, TVS listed three main points including understanding of the customer especially in the Indian market or in the export market.

"I think that's where a lot of incumbents have a strong hold on. If you look at just the electrification that has gone through in the last decade, that has really contributed to push the customer into the technology space," Kumar said.

"The ICE ones were there but that was more on the mechanical element of it. A lot of performance design, a lot of gasoline rush that people wanted but that has a little bit taken over especially with electrification coming in mind," he added.

He also said that the most important factor for at least a company like TVS to lead that space is the understanding of the customer, combining that with the right technology at the right cost.

Answering to a question on how tier 1 network gearing up and making benefit of the government's various policy measures to strengthen localisation programme, Raghavan Sampath, Director, Business Development, MediaTek said that the whole ecosystem changed.

He said, "I think it has really boosted up companies like us who can really do the manufacturing locally and supply, so it's not just the mindset of the consumer, it's also the push from the government that's really helping us move towards making India the Atmanirbhar Bharat.

Speaking on the different possibilities, Ankit V Kaushik, Business Head, Automotive, Jio Things said, "I guess the point is really to differentiate what kind of a use case you want to kind of cater to, so what EV 4-wheelers can do versus what you can derive out of EV 2-wheelers is altogether, it's not just, you can just replicate those use cases from a 4-wheeler to a 2-wheeler. So there's logical reasoning for that because of the ecosystem."

He said that overall presence of the vehicle itself is different. Hence, you have to see what kind of a segment that you want to play into. "If you see within EV 2-wheelers segment also, there's a B2C, where the consumer is directly buying for his home use, where he's going to use it versus a B2B-free kind of a use case for typical use for last month deliveries," he added.