What you see above is "Golden Circle Theory" by leadership expert Simon Sinek. Let's look into 'What' 'How' and 'Why'. We will get deep into the WHY, because while all companies know what they do and many have excelled in How, very few have figured out the WHY. We started with the WHY.
WHY Earth Ride?
“Having recently sold my business, I am starting 2019 with a clean slate, giving me an opportunity to address new challenges. My biggest resolution is to start my journey toward solving the global warming problem. The world is facing a huge crisis in terms of environmental degradation and sustainability of the current way of life. However, the environmental considerations has to be in sync with aspirations of millions of Indians who want to live better lives, which often comes at cost of higher carbon footprint. Finding a solution for the same is going to be challenging and interesting.” – Dhairya Gupta MBA’08, co-founder, AllizHealth
This was resolution of Dhairya Gupta for year 2019 to his alma-mater Babson College. He figured that India was host to most polluted cities in the world and living in Delhi, he had suffered due to the pollution. Did you know that most of the vehicular pollution in India comes from two wheelers? India has highest number of two wheelers in the world - a whopping 22.1 Crores in 2019. These 221 million two wheelers are choking our lungs and our cities. However, they can't be stopped as they move masses of India.
India also has world's largest population of youth - 229 Million people in the age group of 15-24. They are aspirational, energetic and tech savvy. All they need is an opportunity. While opportunities are available in form of last mile delivery jobs where all essentials of life - groceries, food and medicines are delivered to home by gig workers, access to two wheelers/ three wheelers is still challenging for many. Most of them do not have credit history or enough money for down payment. Also, increasing fuel prices have made margins in this job razor thin with a large part of income going towards vehicle operating expenses. This is where we step in.
WHAT we do?
Ownership Based Lease of Electric Vehicles.
All that the customer has to do is give a small security deposit, sign a contract and pay monthly/ weekly lease. We take care of basic maintenance, insurance and put no limits on kms in a month. If all the payments are made on time, we transfer the ownership of the vehicle to the customer.
With this solution, youth get access to electric vehicles enabling them to work in growing business of last mile delivery or other such jobs. They also get several advantages over renting or buying an electric vehicle:
When they pay rent, its a sunk cost. With our Lease-Earn-Model they own the electric vehicle at end of the lease period.
If they want to buy an electric vehicle, specially low speed electric vehicle, financing is usually not available and if it is, interest rates are very high.
In case one decides that they no longer need the electric vehicle, they can always return it. Had they bought the vehicle, depreciation would've been very high.
HOW we do it?
Rental vehicles are often in a bad shape. It either takes huge costs to maintain them or the vehicles are condemned before they make any profits. Let's see two Examples:
Bird Electric Scooters was the fastest Unicorn in Silicon Valley. Bird Burns $43.7 million in Q2 as Revenue Rebounds 477% From Pandemic Plunge
Bounce was a scooter rental startup (now pivoted into electric scooters): Bounce’s annual income touches Rs 100 Cr, losses Rs 442 Cr during FY20
While most startups, even well funded one's, were deeply affected by pandemic and shrank in revenue, we increased our fleet by seven times between FY20 to FY21 and were even profitable. We achieved this being bootstrapped. Our 'Earthapreneur' program also became a hit allowing us to grow rapidly.
So to answer the question - Why we do what we do
We do it because we want to empower the youth of India and reduce pollution in our cities.
We are solving India's two biggest problems - Unemployment and Pollution.