How can electric scooters in India ride their way to success?
India has always had a fond relationship with two-wheelers. Just when we thought that India has moved on from being a scooter country to a bike country, we are now witnessing a flurry of electric scooters being launched. With very little visible differentiation in terms of specifications that matter, these electric scooters are at the risk of becoming a commodity in a category which hasn’t even taken off yet.
How do you in this case make a brand out of a commodity where traditionally scooters in India have stood for the times and represented an era when they were launched. They gave emotional meaning to the product while adding the utilitarian values the audience wanted during those times.
Scooters that symbolized the growing India
Indians witnessed the mechanical wonder on 2 wheels sometime in 1960 when a Bombay based Automobile Products of India acquired the license from Italy’s Innocenti to assemble and sell the iconic Lambretta which had already become cultural icons in Europe along with Piaggio’s Vespa.
The pre-Bajaj era
The new Independent India had only begun to witness personal mobility and four wheelers were still a distant imagination even for the upper middle class.
The Lambretta launched first by Bombay based API under the brand name of Vijai Super thus became the answer of the growing need for personal transport in a free nation. The scooter reached it’s peak popularity when it featured in a popular Bollywood song which showed the yester year’s actor Shammi Kapoor riding it.
Another Indian company called Scooters India Ltd. later bought the rights to market the Lambretta under the brand name Vijai. As we entered 1980s, what is told to be lack of innovation in products and increasing competition from other scooter makers as reasons, led to the decline of SIL.
The pre-Bajaj era also had another hero two-wheeler in the name of Kinetic Luna. The sturdy moped provided stability in the tough conditions of Indian roads and adulterated fuel. It targeted the problems of ordinary Indian and became a solution which used out of easy affordable mobility. It was given away as Man of the Match awards in cricket tournaments when cricketers were just starting to being considered as demi-gods.
However, as is the problem with positioning all products to solve a problem, the same happened to Luna where problems disappeared, the product did not evolve and the scooter market heated up with new entrants.
Enter Buland Bharat’s calling — Hamara Bajaj
A lot of us tend to think that great advertisements had a role to play in making the legendary brands that we know today. This might be true, but great brands become great when the product or service seamlessly integrates in daily lives of consumers. Take examples of Nike or Apple, it wasn’t until at least a decade of making people fall in love with the products did Nike release their first ever “Just do it” campaign.
Similarly, the below ad from Bajaj is still reverberating inside every brain that lived and grew up in India during the 80s but the product is what made Bajaj the ultimate scooter brand it was during that time. The floorboard to keep the luggage and sometimes a small child, the fuel efficiency which kickstarted the scooter with a simple tilt, the extra wheel for support and the space to function like a family car on 2 wheels is what made the product ubiquitous in those times.
The above ad, along with giving goosebumps every time it played, gave “meaning” to a scooter to symbolize something more, which was otherwise just a commodity.
If ever there was a definition of product-market fit to resonate with the needs of what consumers in India wanted that time, it was this.
The thought of “Hamara Bajaj” gave it wings to fly higher.
Even a few years later the ads of Bajaj spoke something about the person who owned it and attempted to say something that was beyond “features” and “specifications”
The ignored audience on 2 wheelers
Bajaj Chetak and LML Vespa became the quintessential family vehicle and symbolized the growing, advancing yet frugal India that had jugaad as the mantra. The India had not yet opened up to the values of aesthetic and convenience.
This was beginning to change in the late 80s which is what Kinetic Honda addressed.
The needs of younger India were addressed by Kinetic Honda and Bajaj Sunny. The new age scooters were lighter, came with no gears and auto transmission, could be self started and did not look like “your dad’s scooter”
These scooters along with Bajaj Sunny were also a bit more inclusive in nature and did not completely ignored females like the other scooters did. The communication still was focused on showcasing convenience.
Comfort, efficiency and value for money
There was a time in between where the focus completely shifted to bikes. They were more powerful, more urban and made a bigger statement. They stood for durability, balance, long drives. The love for motorbikes in India isn’t over yet but there still is a large population that did prefer the non-geared effortless transport and hence we saw the launch of India’s most successful scooter — Honda Activa — with more than 25 million customers since 2000.
Honda Activa, TVS Jupiter, Suzuki Access — the three brands that ruled the Indian scooter space for more than 2 decades with their “value for money” proposition.
What’s the point?
Since the launch of scooters in 1972, each and every successful scooter model stood for something very unique in the era in which they were born.
Vijai Super — the first mover advantage giving a glimpse into personal mobility for Independent India and served largely the upper middle class.
Kinetic Luna — addressed the needs and problems of ordinary Indian plagued with rough commute and stressful jobs. It concentrated on becoming a personal transport to mobilize individuals to become happier and successful.
Baja Chetak and LML Vespa — provided utilitarian values to a growing family with increasing needs yet growing income. There’s a reason why the ad said “hamara bajaj” and not “mera bajaj” because India had still not yet witnessed individualism and these scooters symbolized precisely that togetherness and value.
Kinetic Honda, Bajaj Sunny — targeted the young India of that time. India was coming out of the 1991 economic crisis and entering a golden age of growth, resilience and stability. The Indian middle class was witnessing growing incomes and the youth did not want their dad’s hand me down as scooters and yet wanted more than that.
Honda Activa, TVS Jupiter, Suzuki Access
With increasing fuel prices and traffic in cities these breed of scooters spoke about “value for money” and “comfort” as the two major values. Be it “Suzuki Access” that spoke about “kam peeta hai” or TVS Jupiter that talks about “zyaada ka vyaada” the scooters spoke about key decision making factor mileage coupled with comfort features.
Hero Pleasure
In order to differentiate, even Hero Pleasure concentrated very closely with a single demographic repeatedly with their legendary always on campaign “Why should boys have all the fun?” and positioned the product on a very simple insight that boys don’t get asked as many questions when they go out as girls do.
The point being, all successful scooters provided a very strong emotional and functional value that resonated with the core audience at that time.
Electric scooters — drowned in the confused sea of sameness
India is witnessing a flurry of electric scooter launches and almost all of them are claiming to be the “future of mobility” or “the next revolution” or “super scooter” smartest or quickest. Everyone is speaking manufacture language. Everyone is rooting for their product to bring in a “revolution that’s green”. How can we forget “sustainable mobility”
It is truly surprising that in a category that is so new and unique is still finding it difficult to come up with a differentiated positioning.
TVS iQube Electric — “Your everyday ride, redefined”
Ather 450X — “Super Scooter. All Brain. All Power. All Electric”
Ola Electric — “The start of a revolution”
All the above introduction to the electric scooters are strictly manufacture speak, feature oriented marketing with little or no differentiation or any single category driver positioning.
All the brands claim to have revolutionary product but none seem to showcase that differentiation from the other in their communication.
The new electric scooters need to take a leaf out of their ancestors’ book and truly dig deeper to understand how the product resonates with the mindset of their core target audience.
Feature comparison, price point and a lot of other things are inevitable and will happen at the point of purchase but that’s a job to be done for the landing page or a comparison website not the lead advertising asset.
What’s the Job to be Done for Electric Scooters?
I am not saying it’s an easy job to position something where there has been no precedence yet. I am also agreeing that the positioning statements of all scooter products that India has seen is also hindsight thinking.
However, I keep thinking about the simplicity with which Steve Jobs launched a revolutionary product in Apple iPod when the world was still consumed with CD and MP3 players.
It’s not that I am undermining the importance of not highlighting some of the category barriers. The brands will have to create content to address and educate the below issues in multiple ways
- Range anxiety
- Battery life and maintenance
- Access to service centers
- Availability of charging stations
- Resale value
But this again, can’t be the communication they lead with, that’s a job left for lower the funnel marketing.
Feature marketing what the brands are currently resorting to which essentially is becoming a “mine is better than yours” competition is also getting the audience interested and probably even getting added in the consideration set but still far away from creating a preference.
I truly feel that the core target audience, for the lack of a better description is “urban millennials” and they would want to be spoken to beyond the obvious superlatives of “revolution” “super” “future” “redefine” “fastest” “craziest”
How does an electric scooter fulfill a deep rooted insecurity, anxiety or aspiration in a millennial’s life that a normal scooter or a bike is not doing. How can electric scooters become a way of life, a part of their lifestyle, an experience that millennials cherish every day they take it out for a ride.
How are electric scooters not just a mode to take you from point A to point B.
Electric scooters have to move beyond speed, boot space and charging and look deeper into the role they have to play in their target audience’s life just how the Chetaks and Pulsars and Lunas played when they launched
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