AImost seven years before the release of Baahubali: The Beginning, actor Tamannaah became one of the country's first brand ambassadors of an electric scooter in November 2008. It was her emerging popularity in the Telugu and Tamil movie industries that prompted BSA Motors (a unit of Tube Investments of India, TII, from Murugappa Group) to rope in Tamannaah for its foray into electric vehicles, or EVs.
Being the makers of iconic bicycle brands such as BSA and Hercules, EVS were a new terrain for TII. At that time, the company had launched five models of e-scooters - Smile, Diva, Street Rider, Roamer and Roamer Plus - within a price range of ₹28,000 to ₹230,000. For several reasons including low speeds, the lack of long-lasting batteries and lower consumer interest, the company had to exit the market in the first half of the last decade. Sales stood at around 14,000 units in 2009-10 and dipped to 6,000 units in 2011-12.
Now, a decade later, TII is getting ready for an EV re-entry through a fully-owned subsidiary, TI Clean Mobility (TCM), created in early 2022, by launching three-wheelers and tractors. "In the 1980s, Murugappa Group had applied for a two-wheeler licence for a moped kind of product. They did not get it then. It has been in the company's bucket list ever since. That's why they entered EV scooters in 2000s, I think that was probably wrong timing for the foray and the commitment to make the investment was probably not there because that was immediately after the global financial crisis," said Ranganathan V, a former E&Y official and an expert in family businesses.
This story is from the August 17, 2022 edition of Business Standard.
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This story is from the August 17, 2022 edition of Business Standard.
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