Micromax enters into two-wheeler segment

From mobile phones to appliances to now mobility segment, Micromax founder Rahul Sharma on Thursday launched electric vehicle brand called ‘Revolt Motors’ (under Revolt Intellicorp Pvt. Ltd), and the company is investing around ₹500 crore on manufacturing plant and equipment.

The first product – an electric motorcycle – will be launched in June, and this will be the first two-wheeler to come with 4G LTE-embedded SIM with Artificial Intelligence (AI) for data analytics and connectivity.

“The product will be AI-enabled and will come with a 4G LTE SIM-embedded in it. There will be multiple products from the stable and we will sell them through offline as well as online market places,” Sharma told BusinessLine here.

Tech-rich bike

To start with, the company will open showrooms in Delhi-NCR and expand to other parts of the country. The products will be tech-rich as the focus is more towards ‘platform than the products’, he said when asked to share number of products to be launched in a year.

“This is the right time for every player operating in this space to come together for the greater good of our environment. My vision is to see every household in India have access to sustainable mobility,” he quipped.

The company has set up a manufacturing plant in Manesar (Haryana), which will have a production capacity of 1.20 lakh units a year to be commissioned for phase-I, he said, adding that all the funds for the new company are his personal investment. The company has 312 employees right now and would be adding more on the shopfloor, he said.

Sharma said Revolt will also create disruption in not only the EV market, but also the two-wheeler market as the company targets to garner a double digit market share ‘as soon as possible’ with his products. The Indian two-wheeler industry is pegged around 20 million units in the domestic market as of 2017-18.

“This potentially makes it the most harmful for the environment and hence, there is immense scope to make the segment cleaner and more sustainable. We are working on the premise of making intelligent vehicles that don’t compromise on the form factor and performance internal combustion engine vehicles,” he said.

The company has recently tested the product around Delhi-NCR and could run more than 156 km in a single charge with still left with 15 per cent of the battery. However, Revolt will not boast around that and will say the product will give around 100km on a single charge, Sharma said.

It will also give options of swapping of the batteries apart from setting up of other infrastructure on its own, he added.