The mobile market has pretty much been saturated by brands like Xiaomi and Samsung among others in India. This has taken a big toll on local brands like Micromax, which has sort of forced its co-founder Rahul Sharma to look at other avenues for business in India.
Sharma tried his luck with brands like Yu Televentures, another mobile venture, and now he’s got his eyes on the two-wheeler electric vehicle business. He’s going to do this with his latest venture called Revolt, which he’s said to be working on over the past two years and claims to have invested over Rs 500 crore to get it running.
Here’s everything we know about the brand, Sharma’s plans with it and what kind of product you can expect to launch in the market.
It’s an Electric Motorbike
Speaking to multiple media houses, Rahul Sharma, Chief Revolutionary Officer, confirmed that Revolt will be launching its first product by end of June this year. It’s going to be an electric motorbike, and without revealing the actual design of the bike, he talked about competing in the two-wheeler market with giants like Bajaj, Hero MotoCorp and TVS among others.
The electric two-wheeler space is in its infancy right now, and Sharma might be onto something by targeting this evolving market, but the product needs to deliver in terms of its features and price as well.
AI-Enabled Electric Bike
The term artificial intelligence (AI) has been flaunted quite a bit by smartphone makers for more than a year and now we’ve got automotive companies taking their cue. Sharma clearly has not disconnected from his smartphone days.
The Revolt electric bike is supposedly going to be AI-enabled, as mentioned by Sharma this week. He did say that the bike will be 4G LTE-enabled via a SIM most probably. So, is Sharma terming a connected electric bike and its integration with the Internet as the ‘AI’ factor for the product?
If that is the case, then the Revolt bike is not going to be very different from other existing electric two-wheelers from local startups like Ather and Twenty Two Motors.
It’s All About the Range
The Indian consumer, no matter which bike or car they buy, always want to know ‘kitna deti hai’ which translates to how much mileage does it give. And Sharma is very adept with this mindset of buyers in the country, which is why he claims that the Revolt electric motorbike will offer a range of up to 150 km on a single charge.
The bike will also support a swappable battery system, which means the rider can replace one battery with another after it gets discharged.
He also mentioned that to achieve this range, the bike’s speed will be limited to 85 km/hr, which is the average speed of most electric two-wheelers selling in the country.
Charging Matters
For an electric bike, range and charging set up are the two most important aspects worth knowing. While Sharma talked in details about the range, he didn’t say much about the charging support for his upcoming two-wheeler.
Will the Revolt also need charging units set up at home like Ather, and look at partnering with big-branded stores to set up public charging units? How fast will its system work? These are strong factors one looks for in an electric bike brand. Revolt, just starting up, has big challenges ahead of it.
Choice to Buy Online or Offline
It’s vital for a person to experience the product, know its build quality, whether the size fits his or her needs. And for this, Sharma has claimed that Revolt will set up its base both online and offline, giving the consumer the choice wherever they want to buy from.
The offline-to-online or vice versa model are slowly becoming the go-to strategy brands, and Revolt could surely take Ather’s cue and set up some experience centers, for people to visit and get a hands-on look at its products.
In terms of pricing, Sharma has said that most of the stuff will be imported from China, except for the ECU board, which suggests that a price point of Rs 80,000 to Rs 1 lakh is the expected range, but we’re hopeful that Revolt can bring it further down.
After all, that’s how Sharma’s first big adventure, Micromax scaled up to lead the Indian mobile market for a while not very long ago.
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