Young Turks come into power

At Ather Energy’s 123,000 sq, ft manufacturing facility in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, where 90% production is localized, and where 110,000 scooters and 120,000 battery packs, with an investment of 635 Cr, will be built annually, things are shaping up beautifully. This is where two young turks are paving the way for a big change – for a cleaner and greener India as Indians gear up to leave behind their petrol and diesel vehicles and embrace Electric.  Founders, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, IIT Madras alumni, who founded Ather Energy in 2013, were very clear about not building an EV that would be a “poor replacement of petrol vehicles.” “We wanted to build the best scooter in the market but didn’t just want to buy and integrate components,” says Mehta. That is evident in the way how almost everything has been designed and built in-house, including the assembly line at the plant which boasts 37 stations, where 70 workers build an Ather scooter in four minutes flat! Both, the Ather 450X and the Ather 450 Plus are completely ‘Made in India’ products. “We celebrate the cast aluminum frame, we celebrate the dash,” says Mehta, and why not. Afterall, they designed and