Billionaire Zerodha Founder Buys Ather 450X Electric Scooter, Jokes About Not Getting Discount

Electric vehicles in India have gained popularity over the last five years. We currently have several foreign and Indian brands active in this space. Some of them are doing well in terms of marketing, while others have great products. Many prominent personalities and businessmen are also shifting to EVs lately. Co-founder of Zerodha, Nikhil Kamath, recently bought a brand-new Ather 450X and posted about it online.

Nikhil posted images of himself riding an Ather 450X scooter through the busy city roads. The Zerodha co-founder seems happy with the product. However, as an investor, he is not very happy with the way Ather is marketing the product. Nikhil said that he decided to invest in Ather Energy because of the consistent feedback from ancillary players in the EV space.

He wrote, “My story with Ather Energy began when I started being bullish on the EV sector sometime last year and found interesting insights. Every one of us has pluses and minuses; Ather has sh*t marketing but a great product (sorry Tarun). PS: I bought this scooter at MRP, Tarun (Mehta) didn’t even give me a discount.”

He was, of course, joking about buying the scooter at MRP. He thinks that Ather is a great product, and the only reason they are unable to sell such a good product in decent numbers is due to poor marketing. Nikhil mentions that he’ll always go for great products with terrible marketing. He feels sales is an area that can be easily improved compared to the product.

Another reason behind supporting Ather Energy was the Prime Minister of India’s Make in India initiative. Due to this campaign, he now prefers buying homegrown brands over foreign ones.

Ather Energy is a product developed in and for Indian conditions. A lot of research and development has gone into making this scooter. It is definitely not the most affordable or the one that offers the longest range, but it is a well-engineered product. Their aim was to make the product niggle-free before making it available to the whole country.

They initially launched the product in Bengaluru. The scooter was only available to customers in Bengaluru. They sold scooters to customers, asked for feedback, and used that feedback to improve the product. They slowly increased the radius, and now they offer the scooter almost everywhere in the country.

It was quite clear from the beginning that Ather’s aim was to offer a good product rather than focus on sales. They have been offering a single product in the market for quite some time, and it feels now is the time for them to improve the marketing side to increase sales. The Ather 450X is a scooter suitable for youngsters.

The 450X is powered by a 3.3 kW electric motor that generates 26 Nm of peak torque. The price for the Ather 450X starts at Rs 1.43 lakh and goes up to Rs 1.53 lakh, ex-showroom. The Ather 450X is not the most comfortable scooter. To address this issue, they recently launched a brand-new family electric scooter, Rizta, in the market. It has wide and long seats and comes with a large under-seat storage which is missing from the 450X.