After a successful launch and five years of being in existence, Ather Energy has officially commenced the deliveries of its flagship electric scooter, the Ather 450, in Bengaluru. The Bengaluru-based startup invited a select few customers to the company’s final assembly unit to hand them the keys to their Ather 450 electric scooter.
Also, the company had set up private charging stations at the customers’ residences prior to the delivery of its intelligent electric scooters. With this, the owners of the electric two-wheelers will have free charging available both at home and across the city.
Tarun Mehta, Co-founder and CEO said, “The past few weeks have been incredible for everyone at Ather Energy. Today marks the real launch of the company as consumers take their first scooters home and begin to ride them. We will continue to deliver more Ather 450s in batches to the rest of our pre-orders in the coming months. We still have a lot to learn about the final ownership and day to day usage of our vehicles and are looking forward to the next phase of our growth.”
The company is further planning to roll out its first experience store in Chennai by the second quarter of 2019 and is expecting to expand to Hyderabad, Pune and the National Capital Region (NCR) centred on Delhi by the end of 2019-20.
Ather Energy was co-founded by IIT Madras graduates – Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain in 2013. It is one the few automotive startups in India. It has designed India’s first truly intelligent electric scooters – Ather 450 and Ather 340 and is backed by the founders of Flipkart, Tiger Global and Hero Motocorp.
The first set of 450s are getting off the line. Deliveries begin 11th September 🙂 Watch out for them across Bengaluru… pic.twitter.com/OPSHpuQ6mC
— Ather Energy (@atherenergy) September 8, 2018
Available in two options – Ather 450 and Ather 340, the new electric scooters were launched in India in June this year. The startup has anticipated having 6,000-8,000 bookings for its electric scooters from Bengaluru city alone by June 2019. That is more than the 5,000 scooters it had originally expected to sell in the first 12 months after the deliveries started.
It had opened bookings in early June this year and has already sold out inventory for the rest of 2018-19.
“As far as production goes, the low-hanging fruit right now is just to optimize and streamline the entire process,” said Tarun Mehta. “Over the next six months that’s what we are going after. Post that if we need to add additional capacity, then we will take a different call. But right now, we are investing in supply chain, improving quality, expanding to new geographies and opening new experience and service centres,” he added.