Many local and international players have tried to foray into the Indian e-scooter segment but with little success. What will be unique about your products or your marketing strategy?

JS:

The e-scooters that are currently available in India are slow-speed vehicles and their motor size is about 250 watts. They cannot be registered. Neither can they be insured nor do they offer any finance schemes. This is because all these products are considered to be cycles. Most of them do not meet the government safety regulations (required for a motorised vehicle).

What makes our vehicles different is that Okinawa scooters need to be registered with the RTO like conventional petrol-engine scooters and, similarly, need to be insured and can also be financed by banks, if needed. In fact, if you run our scooter, the product quality, pick-up and performance are as good as those of regular combustion engine scooters. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating; so you have to ride it to believe it.

BI: honest, our main focus is to use everything made in India. Most of the components are already being produced in India. Even the design of the e-scooter is ours. There are a few components that we are still importing, because the manufacturing facilities for these are still in a nascent stage in India. We are also working on developing the motor locally in India. We are planning that by this year everything will be localised on our scooters.

BI:

JS: