Co-founder of Gogoro, CEO Horace Luke says Taiwanese companies want to “grow big” in India despite the challenges they face at home. India’s potential seems ripe to simply ignore, and not just because India is the world’s largest two-wheeler market with 15 million to 20 million new two-wheelers on the road each year. Luke also sees the world’s most populous country as a springboard to accelerate global expansion into other markets. This is not a bad strategy considering that India is already making strides to become a competitive manufacturing hub for all major international brands and products, from smartphones to satellites. Earlier this month, Gogolo made its first commercial entry into India with the introduction of a battery swapping network and smart scooters after piloting and investing millions of dollars in the country. Speaking with Luke on the sidelines at a company event, it’s clear that his ambitions extend beyond this initial debut of his. Founded in 2011 by former HTC executives Luke and Matt Taylor, Gogoro sees itself as the Android of all EVs. The company sells its own branded scooters with replaceable batteries, as well as providing its proprietary technology to other automakers. In addition to its home base of Taiwan, the company already operates in markets such as China, Indonesia, Singapore, Israel, and the Philippines. Speaking at the company’s launch in New Delhi, Luke said the company has chosen India as a strategic market where it can gain many new users and enter new markets, starting with neighboring Nepal. These new developments include an initial battery swapping pilot in Delhi and a partnership with Bellrise Industries to invest a total of $2.5 billion in Maharashtra to build battery swapping infrastructure and networks in the western peninsula. This follows Gogoro’s previous announcement in India. The state government invested his $25 million in electric vehicle management startup Zypp Electric. Luke said Gogoro is in talks with various local and global companies to expand its operations and presence in India, without disclosing their names. The company is already working with domestic manufacturers to produce components locally and is currently partnering with Foxconn to assemble them at a facility in Maharashtra. The company is also looking to partner with Indian and global automakers who can deploy its technology to help grow their businesses in India. The company has about 11 automakers in Taiwan, which manufacture vehicles in various sizes and configurations based on standard battery sizes, the executive said. These include Suzuki, Yamaha, Ion Motor, and more. He suggested that some of them could be introduced in India along with Gogoro’s replaceable battery technology in the future. “Everyone is waiting for me to bring the network,” Luke said, without providing specific details. “Once the network is up and running, [partners] Bring out their abilities and abilities. ” In April 2021, Gogoro partnered with Hero MotoCorp, a major Indian two-wheeler company, to roll out a battery exchange network in the country. However, this deal has not yielded any results. When asked how Gogoro will leverage its partnership with Hero MotoCorp and why it didn’t choose a local automaker to debut and instead bring its own smart scooters to the country, Luke gave a rough answer. Sharing the answer, the management of Hero MotoCorp said that they did so. I wish him all the best before the release. “their [Hero MotoCorp] The brand and the company as a whole is very B2C focused…We’re launching with a B2B focus first, so we try to keep them informed about everything that’s going on,” he says. I did. “We are an open platform. One day they will be ready. [to] Start your vehicle using our system.But what really came first, the chicken or the egg? [situation]. They need to prove that they have a ready platform before they can actually come in and do that. ” Copying the Taiwanese model Gogoro plans to simulate Taiwan’s growth in India by opening 30 stations in Delhi by the first quarter of 2024. The company started operations in Taipei with the same number of stations, but has since expanded to his 12,500 stations serving approximately 600,000 vehicles across Taiwan. We are ready to invest more in India to reach that level and grow even bigger over time. “If you think about Pan India, by 2030-2032 it will easily be in the billions of dollars,” Luke asserted. He told reporters at the launch that Gogoro’s battery swapping system accounts for 93% of all electric vehicles in Taiwan, of which about 80% use its own brand vehicles. In its home country, the company is not limited to two-wheelers but also provides replacement battery technology to players operating autorickshaws. Nevertheless, as Luke admitted to TechCrunch, Gogoro’s growth has stalled and is also declining in Taiwan. among them Recent earnings report [PDF]the Nasdaq-listed company said its revenue fell 10.2% from a year ago to $91.8 million and its net loss was $3.1 million, down from net income of $56.4 million in the year-ago period. He emphasized that there are several reasons for the deterioration of the financial situation and the withdrawal of the Taiwan business. First, he said, is due to lobbying against the speed of electric vehicle adoption after the 2020 election. Second, the country has been slow to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. “Taiwan has always been a pilot for us,” Luke said. “India has always been a market where we develop technology and develop systems so that when we come to India, we are ready. And that’s where the point is now.” He said gasoline in Taiwan is subsidized to the point where it is available at an average price of 0.85 cents per liter, which is significantly cheaper than India’s average price of $1.4 per liter and higher than the world price of $1.22 per liter. did. Although Gogoro is optimistic about starting operations in India, the country has its challenges. relatively small market The share of EVs is only 3.7% of the country’s total car market. Electric scooters account for 90% of total EV sales in the country, but only about 5% of the total motorcycle market. The Indian government is allocated billions of dollars Subsidy and discount systems to attract manufacturers and commuters to EVs. However, these advantages are only sustained for a short period of time, and the electric two-wheeler market has recently been disrupted by structural changes. But Gogoro, like other players in the EV market, is bullish as the Indian government targets 30% EV adoption by 2030. Gogoro’s approach of considering India as a manufacturing base is also likely to appeal to the government and help the company make some changes. Move production from China and enter new markets. It’s important to note that while GoGoro’s revenue decreased significantly last quarter, its battery replacement service continued to grow, with revenue increasing 10.4% year-over-year to $33.6 million. The company is considering collaborating with other automakers in India on battery replacement technology, which could be a mutually beneficial move for both Gogoro and the automaker. The Indian automotive industry is actively seeking solutions to reduce charging times and provide efficient alternatives to ICE vehicles. By offering its technology to automakers, Gogoro can capitalize on this need and increase revenue from battery replacement services. A recent report co-authored by Bain & Company and Blume Ventures forecast Battery-free electric two-wheelers can reduce the initial cost of a vehicle by 40-50%, thereby attracting price-sensitive Indian customers. But at the same time, he cautioned that building a battery replacement ecosystem in India will be difficult in the short term, saying that maintaining battery replacement inventory of top SKUs across manufacturers, identifying targeted customer segments, and creating a “walled-in” ecosystem will be challenging in the short term. proposed to establish a partnership between the two countries. Supports replaceable battery system. One investor told TechCrunch that to truly succeed, the market needs interoperability and standardization of battery swapping, similar to how today’s mobile phones have USB-C. . But for Gogoro, this is just the beginning of exploring how much of an impact he can have on the overall EV market with available battery replacement solutions. “We’ve got a whole ecosystem that we need to deploy. It took us a little while to get it ready, but it’s going to take a little while to get up and running. Besides, who said this was going to…
Source: techcrunch.com
