| Friday, 04 October 2024 |
An abridged, narrative version of the latest episode of Two by Two, The Ken’s premium weekly business podcast Subscribe here
Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
India’s two-wheeler market has long been filled with a surplus of options. Looking for a motorbike? A scooter? Here’s a list that’s longer than you’re tall.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But not by much. And hardly any of these options are very different from each other. By now in India, scooters can be considered a properly commoditised product.
So if you are a manufacturer just setting out, how do you stand out from the crowd?
Maybe you manage to create some differentiation in design. Great. Then what? How long before it’s copied by a rival?
Maybe you say you are a premium product. But that means you are deliberately narrowing your market. After all, by definition, ‘Premium’ isn’t for everyone.
Maybe you say you’ll build a fully integrated operation, from R&D to rolling the vehicle off your factory floor. But almost every established automobile manufacturer already does this.
Maybe you double down on internet-connected vehicles, or choose to optimise capital efficiency, or go down some other niche. Doesn’t matter. Because even if you nail it down, much of it can be replicated by rivals. Maybe they won’t do it as well as you have, but they’ll get close enough that it won’t matter. And incremental gains don’t mean much to customers.
How do you build an actually defensible moat?
Rohin Dharmakumar: You buy an Ather, what do you get?
Tarun Mehta: You get magical experiences.
Like, Ather does something in everything that they do, which is that one thing will be magical.
You will pay a price for it. Even sacrifice a few things for it, because we won’t do everything.
But one thing will be so magical, that ‘ki dil aa jayega aapka’ (you’ll fall in love with it).
Tarun Mehta is the co-founder and CEO of Ather Energy, the electric two-wheeler maker that just filed for an IPO last month, and we were recording for episode 12 of the Two by Two podcast. With us in the studio were my co-host Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Professor Rishikesha Krishnan, Director of IIM Bangalore and an expert on Strategy, Innovation, and Leadership, on which topics he has authored more than 200 publications, including two books.
It’s not often that you have the co-founder and CEO of a company heading for an IPO discussing its strategy and vision with the director of one of India’s most prestigious management institutes who both studies and teaches strategy.
But that’s exactly what we have for you in this episode of Two by Two:
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