Growth of Electric Bikes - A Potential Business Opportunity

Electric bikes are constantly growing in India thesenon-standard for Indian vendors. This discouraged the
days. Entrepreneurs are optimistic in this business,vendors to work in developing them as they are
despite the low sales trends. In India, there are morepessimistic about E-bike business as a whole. This
than 40 e-bike companies manufacturing electric bikes.forces the OEM to import which increases the cost of
Almost all companies importing electric bike parts inthe e-bike. Increase in cost reduces the motivation in
completely knocked down (CKD) kits from countriescostumer to buy. Hence it requires the initiation to build
like China, Taiwan and assembling in India and selling inthis business and everybody should be part of it.
India.With this introduction of importance of the
Being keen about product quality & marketindigenization, we will discuss the various business
capture, Indian companies are currently concentratingopportunities associated with e-bikes.
onVarious parts of electric bikes & related business,
1. The dispatch of quality CKD kits at vendor end tocan be classified as follows
reduce the inline quality issues.1. Sheet Metal & Tubular parts - Chassis, Front
2. Investing in R&D and indigenizing the e-bikefork, Handle bar, Swing arm, Centre stand, side stand.
components and developing them in India. This helps2. Plastic & PP parts - Front mould, Side covers,
the manufacturers have a better control over quality.Handle cover, Seat, Side lower covers, etc.
Some companies developing e-bike dealers &3. Drive train parts - Electric Motor, Power Electronic
service equipment manufactures.controller, Batteries, Charger, DC-DC Converter.
3. Good after sales service. The whole e-bike4. Electric & lighting accessories - Head lamps,
technology is new, the more the company cares itsIndicator lamps, Buzzer, Horn, Wire-harness ,
costumers more goodwill it gains.Connecting sockets, etc.
E-bike business in a nascent stage, there are many5. Miscellaneous parts - brake levers, Electronic
business opportunities are seen for coming years.accelerator (Throttle), Switches, Speedometer, etc.
Taking E-bike manufacturing into consideration, there6. Dealer and service equipments - Hydraulic tools, jigs,
are companies like Hero electric, Ampere Vehicles pvtramps, dealer test equipments for electrical
ltd, Ultra Motors ltd, Lectrix Motors Ltd, TI and manycomponents, etc.
more establishing themselves into this business. Hence,The above list goes on and on. The objective in
no company yet captured this business. This simplyclassifying & listing the parts is to show that a
means that still there is a scope for a newbie to comebusiness opportunity lies in making each of the above
and stand in the business of manufacturing electricparts. Almost 60% of the above parts are same as
bikes.that of convectional automobile parts but with some
During my work experience of 4 years in this electricdimensional change. It is true that a lot of R&D is
bike R&D; my team was tired of looking forrequired to develop a good quality and suitable product
vendors who can make a single e-bike part in India. Asbut it starts with the initiation from every entrepreneur.
these parts are imported from outside, they are of