Que: Shed some light on EEE-Taxi including its vision.

Ans: EEE-Taxi is an end-to-end e-Mobility solution provider, which brings in the 100 per cent EV’s, Charging Infra, and state-of-the-art technology together, to save companies time, money, and carbon emissions. Additionally, we create a charging marketplace for other EV users to plug in their EV’s.

We are the Neil Armstrong of EVs in India, launched and registered the first Commercial EV car in Delhi, in 2015.

We wish to lead the adoption of EV’s and e-Mobility in Corporate commute (B2B) space in India with the support and mentorship of Shell. In India our vision is to drive e-Mobility with all form factors in Tier 1-2 cities with an open ticketing system along with Public Transport Network also.

Currently, we have a total number of 35 employees, and 150 drivers.

Que: Details about the applications, innovation, or trademark. How will it help the society and country?

Ans: Our seamless integration of the EV ecosystem links Vehicle diagnostics such as status of charge, distance to empty with Employee Transport Dashboard for trip planning. It then talks to our smart charging infra, which shows the availability of chargers and allows transactions remotely. We enable each ride with our robust technology.

So, we increase the average occupancy per car and reduce the total number of cars required to commute the same number of employees. We also reduce travel time per employee in both shifts for work-life balance. With our tech, we can save clients 5-30% of the logistics cost in various ways, whether it is less number of cars, automation of the transportation processes and reduce carbon footprint per FTE (full time employee).

We have various trademark applications and few of them have been approved.

Our solutions are giving confidence to the corporate and employee the visibility, safety for commute. With this trust when users switch to EV Commute they are doing their bit to reduce pollution. Their saving in travel time leads to more productivity and better-quality time with their families. The more we drive EV’s we are reducing the pollution and helping save India a massive import bill for petroleum products. We are also helping India meet its UNDC target, the pledge it has taken in the Paris climate agreement to reduce its carbon emission by a certain percentage of its GDP.

Que: Focus areas for future expansion?

Ans: We wish to scale in 10-15 Tier 1-2 cities, where the impact is highest. We are already operating in Delhi NCR, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Some of the immediate cities under our plan are as follows:-
1. Mumbai
2. Pune
3. Chennai
4. Jaipur
5. Chandigarh
6. Jammu
7. Kolkata
8. Ahmedabad
9. Indore - Bhopal

Que: Please shed some light on your educational background and experience, along with other founders details.

Ans: I have done my MBA from Heriot-Watt University, UK, and MDP Logistics from IIM Ahmedabad. I am also a Certified Corporate Director from IOD, and also a Certified GHG emissions consultant from CII.

My work front experience includes as MD of Automotive Logistics Company Servicing Various Car OEM’s in India, Commercial Warehousing, Corporate Banking UK, Founder member of Car Carrier Association of India.

Vipul Nanda is the Co-Founder and Director of EEE-Taxi. His work front experience includes as MD of Automotive Logistics Company Servicing Various Car OEM’s in India, Founder Member & President of Car Carrier Association of India.

Que: What market scope do you see? How do you plan to market your service?

Ans: PAN India there are .6 million Cars in B2B space with a market size of $ 4 Billion & including Ride-Hailing there 1.9 Million Cars with a Market size of $20 Billion. We plan to reach out to various companies in different industries, who have substantial Fleet requirements and are environmentally cautious. All corporates are pledging to be carbon positive by some years. We will not only help achieve reduction on SCOPE 2/3 emissions but will also provide consultancy services with a road map to achieve the same, which can be reported in their annual report/sustainability statement.

Current issues in the market which eee-Taxi is resolving. These are the things by which we mean to market our service.

1. High Air Pollution, Climate Change.
2. Significant Transport Cost at FTE Levels -Typically 4-8% of a company’s cost base.
3. High Transaction Cost-Over 10,000+ Manual Trips sheets to be reconciled every month.
4. Opaque Operations-Up to 30% excess billing.
5. Unmet SLAs- Poor SLA, Unsafe commute, Non-Compliant Driver, and Car management.
6. High FTE carbon footprint 0.8 Tonnes of CO2 per employee per annum.
7. High Travel Time, Stress, and Lower Productivity- Travel is the source of stress for the 30% workforce.
8. Fuel Price Increase-15% Year on Year fuel price escalations.
9. End to End E-mobility Ecosystem.
10. On demand-supply and integration of vehicles, with public transport.
11. Shared EV Charging Infra.
12. Adoption of EV due to lack of funding to Drivers and network partners.

Que: As an entrant did you find any challenges and how was the E4 program instrumental in tackling the challenges?

Ans: EV still is at a nascent stage in India, the challenges have been multi fold and multi-dimensional.

That is what kept us on our toes and led us to come out with End-to-End solution. For instance:

1. Limited choice of Cars with limited range.
2. Technology for Cars Diagnostic and Integration with Employee commute system.
3. Set up of charging infrastructure, with Discom challenges on LT/HT threshold and downstream capex.
4. Adoption and Mindset change for adoption of EV.
5. State Agencies being unaware about policies implemented by the government for EVs.

Shell E4 has been instrumental in terms of our mentorship. It validated our solutions are scalable nationally and internationally. It also provided us the platform for Networking with various enterprises and investors. We are also in discussion with Shell India to electrify their fleet for employee commutes.

Que: What are your views on government support for the start-up ecosystem in the country? Any suggestions?

Ans: In my view, there are a few good schemes which are launched by the Government for Start-ups; however, they are not implemented in true letter and spirit. So essentially a start-up is not able to utilise it properly and the scheme stays as marketing exercise only. In my view there is more that can be done for promoting start-ups in India.

Que: Please share details about investor, funding, capital etc?

Ans: Shell India Markets Private Limited has supported us a lot. We had received, earlier, USD 2,00,000 in a pre seed Round of funding. Our Bootstrapped Paid-Up Capital is USD 0.58 million and Quasi Capital – USD 0.32 million.

Que: What are your new targets set?

Ans: We are building capacities to ride the EV wave and want to create a platform where the demand side is the corporates, airports, train stations, hotels, self-drive etc and the supply side is met by our owned, leased, and aggregate model.

Under the aggregate model, the driver will be enabled to own the car and deploy on our platform to do business. The livelihood of our drivers including women drivers is maintained through assured pay-outs and welfare programs to support their families.

Additionally, fleet investor partners will also be created for business growth in the community.

Another operational efficiency or innovation we have brought is to merge 2 segments of B2B and B2C. B2B Passenger Mobility switching between Employee Corporate Commute & B2C Ride-Hailing Services, strategic partnership with UBER, and others for sweating the asset.