Interview with Praveen Kharb, CEO of Twenty Two Motors

Interview by Sirish Chandran

Why are you doing an e-mobility start up?

We started Twenty Two Motors with a vision of going into electric mobility, and to be connected and providing electric mobility solutions to the next generation and to the people who want to be ahead of time. Nothing has changed in the past few years in gasoline scooters. Only the design and aesthetics have changed, the core technology is the same. The problems inherent in gasoline scooters cannot be solved using the same technology. For instance many users need their bike to be serviced regularly. Some only need their bike to be serviced every 800km while some need the bike to be serviced every 500km because the riding behaviour is different. Every rider rides differently and the additional sensors in Flow will tell us how the bike is being ridden and give suitable suggestions.

The technology that is being used has already been used in cars. What else can be done in bikes that hasn’t been seen in the automotive sector?

Yeah, I can tell you one thing. You can customise the way the bike is run. For instance the high torque nature of the bike will not be something that my wife would want. So the peak torque available on the bike can be reduced for my wife. I can also set the max speed that she can go to. Maybe she is taking someone along and needs the peak torque so that can be done with the press of a button. With machine learning, the bike will learn and suggest or recommend changes on its own.

What unique features does  Flow have?

When you have a punctured tyre, you have to drag it to the nearest tyre shop. To make it a little more convenient, there is a drag mode and then you can really take it along at walking pace from 3kmph to 5kmph and it will decide the pace automatically according to the pace that you are walking at, to make it convenient for the user.

What is the dealership model that you are following?

What we are doing is that we are opening up our experience centres and people can experience the bikes at the centres and order from the centres. The bikes will be delivered to the customer’s house. So, it’s a bit of a hybrid model that we are following. We are planning to start at NCR with 10 experience centres and then we will expand.