“Two-wheelers are butter, but three-wheelers are bread,” says Sulajja Firodia Motwani, perhaps the only female boss of a vehicle manufacturing company in the country. After a tumultuous journey of three decades of hits, misses, tie-ups and fallouts, her ‘Kinetic’ group finally seems to have found its calling in the green energy space.
Kinetic, which once ruled the affordable two-wheeler mobility space in the country with models like the Luna moped and the wildly popular Kinetic Honda gear-less scooter had found the going tough as competition intensified around the turn of the century, and aggressive international players entered the scene — Honda itself went solo, while a tie-up in 2014 with Mahindra also could not be consummated.
Now, rechristened and on the rebound, ‘Kinetic Green’ as the Sulajja’s company is now called, aims to focus firmly on electic vehicles, even as it is tentatively testing other technologies like hydrogen and fuel cells.
But commercially, it seems to have found its footing in the two-wheeler (2W) and three-wheeler (3W) space, with a bunch of commercial 3W already making their mark, and the eLuna, its electric moped, making a mark.
Having reset, Sulajja is now on to what she calls Kinetic 3.0 — a company that intends to specialise on e-rickshaws, even as it strengthens its electric 2W lineup.
On Wednesday, Kinetic Green announced its first set of passenger 3Ws, coming with feature like fast 15 minute charging.
Sulajja believes Kinetic has found its sweet spot — the light electric two-wheeler, as well as e-rickshaws. “The eLuna space is not cluttered…while there are 300 others battling it out to launch and make profits in the electric scooter and bike space,” she pointed out.
Likewise, she pointed out the immense growth potential of the e-rickshaw space —in the L3 sub-segment, 30% is the passenger growth expected, which jumps up to 82% in the L5 sub-segment. So confident is she that the company’s production is expected to go up to 1.5 lakh units by 2030, with a second plant opening in Maharashtra’s Supa.
The potential and expansion opportunity of e-rickshaw space may be immense, but Sulajja is unlikely to have an open field for long. 3W combustion engine champ Bajaj is now seriously diverting its attention to electric 3W. Sulajja and Kinetic have their job cut out.
