What does it take to be “PREMIUM” player ?
On a Sunday morning, I met my legendary friends Muzammil and Shaindil and were sipping coffee in Bangalore’s famous Indirannagar 100 feet road.
All of us are from technology background and passionate about Quality Products. Our eyes went to Ather experience centre and visited casually. Given that we are techno-freaks we started enquiring, asking, quizzing and poured tonnes of questions. For our surprise we could co-relate us with the Ather team in no time. Our curiosity rose and we had good exchange of our passion towards Premium products.
Wait a second. Why am I talking about an automobile company in first place ? Although I belong to software development by profession, I am talking about an automobile company because both of us have one thing in common — “Premium Product Development”. When it comes to developing premium products there are many things which are common between us.
Design/Interface, Engineering, Technology, Performance, Monitoring, Scalability, Testing & End-To-End solution
Not just that, but for any product to reach its peak you need a team which values
Passion, Craftsmanship, No Compromise attitude, Perseverance, Attention to detail, Innovation, Continuous Improvement
Design/Interface
Gone are those days where people were ok to make compromises on product’s UI/UX. Customers are constantly looking forward for better user interfaces and experiences. UI/UX now has taken a prime seat. For a premium product this is a must have.
Ather has done a fabulous job when it comes to its stunning looks. I was pretty impressed by its design. It is clean, simple, futuristic and most important one — No-nonsense elements (No Variants, No Color options, No accessories, No Diwali offers :) ). I can think and co-relate it to “Apple” for its design.
Engineering & Technology
Brining best people (with different skillsets and mindsets), practices, ideas, technologies together and making sure that all are working in best possible manner. This is a key differentiator in building a product vs building a premium product. Cloud, Analytics, Performance, Monitoring, Remote diagnostics and Artificial Intelligence are the cool and happening technologies right now. All these are must have for any modern day software product.
Talking about Ather, I am not best judge of its “build” & “Performance” when it comes to automobiles — however I could highlight few things which impressed me. Aluminium chassis, front and rear disk breaks, water and dust proof battery. I could zoom to 60 Km/Per Hour in no time and driving was sheer fun. I felt the “Quality” hasn’t been compromised anywhere.
and Here comes the tech-stuff I loved the most. Ather has a 7 inch display panel which they call it as “brain” of the product. So this makes Ather vehicle Smart and Connected. Through this “brain” the vehicle is connected to rest of the components of the vehicle and collects how they are performing. Via GPS and 3.5G inbuilt sim the data gets uploaded to the cloud constantly. Now once the data is available a whole lot of possibilities open up — advanced analytics, error detection, performance tuning & remote diagnostics. As days pass and they would have enough riding data and opens up another possibility in the direction of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. This makes product not just smart but intelligent too. This feels like “Tesla” on Two wheels.
End To End Solution
While developing a premium product is important, it is equally important to have an end-to-end solution. I am talking about pre and post production phases of product. While research team brings in ideas for continuous improvement, The post production experience and analysis complements it. This includes (but not limited to) Research, Trial Period, Support, Customer relations and more
Ather has nailed it with below :
- Ather Grid and point. Ather claims every 4 kms you will find a grid where you can charge your vehicle.
- Point can be installed at home too. If not then we could charge at home using regular 5 amps socket.
- Good news is the grid infra can be used not only by Ather vehicles but is compatible for all electrical vehicles.
- Hassle free billing. No OTP No Authentication needed. The backend systems know about your vehicle upfront.
- Door step service and support if vehicle break down.
- On the Air updates
The grids are strategically placed near cafe’s, malls opening up some new business opportunities.
Why I would recommend all Bangalorean’s to take a test drive ?
- Electric vehicles is no longer future but present.
- This product is available only in Bangalore as of today. No other cities in India.
- Ather is Bangalore based start up. Designed and developed in “Namma Bengaluru”. Their production line is in whitefield.
- Bangalore being Silicon Valley of India — All technology ehnthusiastics should explore.
- Finally that “Quality Quotient”. If you have passion for quality products you must try this once.
P. S: There are a lot of videos available in YouTube if you are curious now :)
