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Earlier in 2009, Dhivik Ashok, a 25-year-old entrepreneur, and his father sat across their living area, discussing about the future of mobility in India. Further, concluding the thought, they together started the idea to form the electric scooter company GoGreenBOV.
Later on by 2015, the father-son duo had a million dollars in revenue, and were wanting to develop a bigger firm and aimed at achieving higher range. Yet, in 2016, they realised the fact that their bikes were ending quickly as a reason of lead acid batteries. And hence, they went towards R&D from the profits they had made. Yet, soon, the market wrote them off.
Presently, Dhivik is of 35-years age, knowing surely about the ‘electric vehicle’ industry and its phenomenon. After spending three years in the jungle, the GGBOV team is seen again with a stronger flow. Anonymously, the company is ranging and piloting its bikes with a major ride-hailing company. It also has numerous delivery and e-commerce companies talking to it to acquire its solution. Further, the company has a blueprint for a B2C business for 2020.
GGBOV had a very unbelievable starting. Back till 2009, the father-and-son team used to retro-fit gas kits to cars for nearly 10-years, and then realised the bet on electric vehicles because the total cost of ownership was far cheaper than the petrol-run two-wheelers. During the early days of vehicle-market, vehicles could go up to 80 km for just one rupee.
Therefore, they invested 24 lakh INR and began to source electric vehicle components from China, assembled them in Bengaluru, and sold them to over 50 customers. The first batch as targeted became an absolute success, to mention the sales. Yet, there also were several unhappy customers. The bikes had some motor issues, refused to start sometimes, and would stall. That’s when the company began to take control of components like battery and motor, planning to order while maintaining and perfecting the assembly.
Increasingly, between 2016 to 2019, the company filed close to 16 patents in Electric vehincal technology with the most efficient and important one being in a software that manages drive patterns of a customer to give peak power. “Our focus in R&D has been on improving the life and operation of a battery pack. With that as a singular focus, we are proud to have patents in various stages of approvals in the battery space alone. Because of the advancements that we have made, we also showcased our innovations at the CES 2019,” claimed Dhivik. Furthermore, GoGreenBOV was the only Indian EV Company to showcase at CES, and was highly appreciated for its work.
Dhivik says, “I believe that we will be setting up fixed charging infrastructure at offices and later at homes. It is far more efficient than setting up swapping batteries because of the cost benefits.” The following company also has a manufacturing plant in Kolar to bring outcomes to more than 10,000 vehicles a year and enhance this capacity as per development in FY 2020.