Dhruv Sharma: Hey there, listeners. It's Monday, September 7. We're streaming live. This is stream number 135. Again, three very, very solid founders that we're gonna be chatting with, and the first of those founders is Khushi Mittal. We're gonna bring her up on the screen. Khushi, welcome to The Offline Network.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Thank you so much for having me.

Dhruv Sharma: Our pleasure. Khushi is the founder of, Aspera Industries. And before we get chatting with her, we have a video that we'd like you to see, that Khushi and her team put out.

Utsav Somani: Alright. Playing it now.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Progress has a habit. It's comfortable. Nothing feels wrong because compromise has become invisible. What is the ignition? What else? Stop.

Utsav Somani: Break the surface.

Dhruv Sharma: Alright. Fantastic. Alright. Khushi, what did we just see?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): So you basically saw the concept video for our very first aircraft. It's called Eureka. It's basically so this is this is the aircraft that we've designed over the last couple of months. It's the most efficient seaplane to exist on planet. It's sort of a pilot study to start understanding what is an aircraft or the air like, the utility of an aircraft look like ten to twenty years from now. I started this company with the same intention just trying to answer the question, what does an aircraft look like twenty years from now? Right? I was very baffled by the fact that we live in a world where information is traveling around at at the speed of milliseconds, but physical things are still traveling at the speed of 1956. So we haven't made a step change in how we move atoms around from point a to point b since shipping container and commercial aviation. X more expensive than the cost of shipping things currently. So Eureka is a result of that answering that question, essentially. This is something that we've designed, made sub-scale designs for, and flown the aircraft over the last four months.

Utsav Somani: So why did we stop, using seaplanes in the 1950s?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): So, traditionally, seaplanes have been designed as wooden boat like a flying boat. Right? With, like, massive hull like structures with wing and two engines slapped on it. Very, very drag inducing in nature, very gas-guzzling as a result. So they got they they never really validated as commercial proof points, because of how much fuel you had to spend to just make it fly from point a to point b. They were very fancy as a concept but never really worked as a design, basically. We thought about c three d design from first principles, thought about where exactly are we spending the most amounts of fuel and how can we reduce it going forward. I did not want to design a boat that flies. I wanted to design a very highly optimized aircraft for the air that also happens to take off and land from water. Right? So that's why we came up with the concept of hydrofoil specifically. Hydrofoils are something that are used very popularly in boats and, like, speed speed, boat racing, etcetera. It's something that helps you cut through water very quickly. It's essentially wings underwater. So the leverage that you have here is that water is about 800 times denser than air. So a very small geometry can, basically generate insane amounts of lift, and we've used the same concept to take off in natural water. Hydrofoils help us transition from water to the point where the wings take over, essentially. So that's the main concept. We are very, very fuel efficient that way when we're taking off from water. Once we are in air, hydrofoils completely retract inside the fuselage, leaving no trace that this was a seaplane ever. So very optimized for air.

Dhruv Sharma: When we were seeing the video, Khushi, I couldn't help but pay attention to the to the material that the aircraft will be made of the composites. Yeah. You know this. They used to be this aircraft that called the Spruce Goose. Right? The giant seaplane with eight turboprops, and that used to be made of wood, like, back in the day, which

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Right.

Dhruv Sharma: Makes sense because you're saying, like, flying boats. What composites are you guys working on? How will they be game changers?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Right. So we are using 100% carbon fiber to begin with currently. We might end up using some bits of fiber going forward, but not at the moment. So it's either Kevlar or composites for us right now, Kevlar or carbon fiber for us right now. People used to be very comfortable with wood. Like, wood used to be the premium material, you know, back, sixty years ago. And they used to be like, metal is never going to be a commercializable material because it's hard to make. You'll have to weld it, forge it, blah blah blah. And that turned out to be very, very wrong. You see metal everywhere around you right now. I specifically think that carbon fiber is having that, sort of revolution in itself right now, where it's a very young material. It's about 40 to 50 years old. That's it. It's now starting to become popular as something that is seven to eight times stronger than metal while being a lot more lighter. And we're trying to find that segment where we can make design an entire aircraft with carbon fiber, making it exceptionally light.

Utsav Somani: And you mentioned some numbers and they are listed on the whiteboard behind you as well. So this whole thing will have a payload capacity of thousand kilo thousand KGs, a distance, capacity of, 2,000 kilometers. And you wanna actually bring down the cost of shipping per ton kilometer to $1.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Oh, less than $1. Yes.

Utsav Somani: That's insane. Like, I mean, how did you come to these numbers and assumptions?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Right. So the metric that matters here is the cost per tonne-kilometre. Right? Which basically talks about the cost of traveling a ton of cargo, like 1,000 kg of cargo for a kilometer of distance, essentially. And when you break that cost down into absolute first principles, it comes down to just two things. How much payload can you realistically carry inside your aircraft slash vehicle and how efficiently you can carry it from point a to point b. That's it. These are the only two metrics. We kept this as a, like, a North Star while we were designing the aircraft and designed the entire aircraft around it. 90% of the volumetric capacity of our aircraft currently by design is only dedicated for payload, nothing else. It's an autonomous aircraft, so there's no cockpit, pressurized cabins, windshields, etcetera. You don't require a crew of men to chauffeur around a car a few boxes of cargo from point a to point b. Right? So we it's completely autonomous by design. It's very, very efficient in terms of fuel and how much the energy costs attached to the aircraft are. To go to a distance of 2,000 kilometers, we carry very little fuel in our aircraft, making it very, very efficient in air, essentially. So that's how we brought the cost down, a lot a lot more cheaper than whatever freight cost exist today. To give you, like, a cost comparison, currently, air freight costs about 2 to $3 per tonne-kilometre depending on the aircraft that you are using, and shipping containers cost about 16 to 25¢ per tonne-kilometre. So the differential is huge. Right? And we fall somewhere in between at the moment, and we plan to be cheaper and cheaper over time as we, get up to scale.

Dhruv Sharma: Fantastic. So are you con have you conceived Eureka's kind of, like, last mile transport for for goods?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): No. It's not last mile. It's first-mile and middle-mile, essentially. So, like, port to port, warehouse to warehouse, one factory to another factory that's situated around port.

Dhruv Sharma: That would be first mile. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Alright. Maybe just one quick, follow-up, Khushi, which is tell us more about the specs that you've, envisioned. Right? How heavy is this aircraft gonna be? How high will it fly? How fast will it go? And we you should underscore the fact that it's gonna be autonomous. There won't be a pilot in the cockpit.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Right. So the speed of the aircraft is going to be about 70 meters per second, in SI. Then we have the the payload capacity is about a thousand kgs, and the rest of the aircraft's empty weight, including the structures, the engine, the fuel, and everything, would be about roughly 1,000 to 1,200 kgs. So we are trying to optimize for carbon fiber more and more as we go forward. But currently, what we are doing is building sub-scale models to prove out every bit of the physics of the aircraft. So, you don't like, when you design an aircraft, you don't, ideally jump to a very expensive prototype, a full-scale prototype, immediately. Right? This is the same concept that's being used for designing ships or bigger general aviation airplanes as well. So what we have done so far is we built a 1:10 sub-scale model, like a tenth of the actual full-scale aircraft, and we've flown it. The aircraft this this aircraft's intention the sub-scale's intention was basically to, demonstrate our hydrofoil capabilities, the takeoff and landing sequence from hydrofoils. That was that's the main mode of our physics. Right? So we wanted to start with that. We've flown that. We've taken off from, and landed from water. Now we are going toward more stable stable flights, over the next couple of months. But, basically, the six month plan is to build bigger and bigger sub-scale model. Like, we are now building, like, a 1:4 and 1:2 going forward in the next six months just to fly the aircraft and do out every bit of the physics, including aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, such as the water transition for us, flight stability and control, and also the structural mechanics with carbon fiber.

Utsav Somani: So the aim is to be basically FedEx of water logistics, I believe. Right?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Yeah. Like, imagine, like, an Amazon or a Flexport, but also making their own airplanes, essentially.

Utsav Somani: So the other thing is that I mean, right now I mean, mostly it's air cargo or ship cargo. Air cargo, of course, lands on, like, runways, which are now very well spread out across the world. But you wanna target the 70% of Earth, which is all made up of water. But Every water surface also is different. Right? It's not standardized like a road. You have these specs for, landing aircrafts and tires. But I mean, it's all choppy. Sometimes it can be choppy. Sometimes it can be different. Like so how can you, like, model for such scenarios, in different geographies of the as well?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): So we do try to understand exactly where the aircraft would fail and what scenarios are not, very efficient for us to fly in, essentially. Like, you have, for example, your airplanes, that are taking off and landing from runways. They are also standstill when there's a heavy storm or when there's, like, heavy rains, etcetera. So there will be situations like that for us as well, but, essentially, we've designed the aircraft to, withstand the existing port conditions that you see across the world right now. So I mentioned in my tweet as well that about 80% of the world's cargo is being transported by the seas right now. And from that 80%, essentially, a major chunk is standing across the Indian Oceans today. So that's a massive, massive market for us, like the Indian Southeast Asia market, the Middle Eastern market. Imagine routes like Sri Lanka to Maldives. Maldives as a country does not produce anything. It's 90%, imports right now. So Sri Lanka to Maldives is a massive crowd. New Zealand to Australia, Japan to South Korea. These are the main areas that we're targeting in. And these are places where already there's existing ports and seaplane, categories. Right? So the conditions are a lot more favorable for us to fly in from there, but, of course, there's, like, outlier conditions that we won't be able to fly from.

Dhruv Sharma: Fantastic. So, Khushi, so far in the conversation, we've been projecting too far into the future. Right? Let's just come back to the here and now for a bit. What's happening in the company right now? How many teams do you have? What are you guys spending time on right now? And, also, how do you break everything down into smaller problems, smaller pieces? What are you testing? Give us you know, go on for about three or four minutes and tell us about all of this stuff.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Right. So I started the company about a year and a half ago. So we are a fairly young team. We try to keep the team as small as possible. The average age of the company is about 22 years old. And we we basically, try to find the best talent in India for aerodynamics and carbon fiber. These are the sort of the main modes that we're building the company around. So 40% of the team is aerodynamics slash hydrodynamics, and the rest is basically carbon fiber and autonomy specifically combined. So this is something that we want to go much, much deeper into. We have a priority state that we don't want to be best or good at good enough at 100 things. We want to be the best at one or two things and then just go all in on it and, sort of build the company around that. So we are a 15 people team currently, and we will be about, twenty, twenty five towards the end of October. Still trying to keep the team as small as possible. But, essentially, over the next eighteen months, we want to push out our first full-scale aircraft. So that's the main goal.

Utsav Somani: And how much does it cost? Like, I mean, just for our curiosity, like, how much does a full scale, aircraft cost, and what are you aiming to get at when you start a full scale fleet? Because you wanna actually operate them yourselves and not sell them, like Boeing or Airbus.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): So making the first aircraft is probably the most expensive thing because that's where we are spending the most R&D cost in terms of time and money. When we get to a scale of about 50 airplanes specifically, our BOM goes down to about two fifty k plus aircraft per aircraft. Right? Which is the cheapest aircraft you can buy on the planet today. That's that's something that excites us a lot. We want to figure out how can we make it more and more efficient over time. But, like, two fifty to 300 is a range that we are projecting based on our, requirements at the moment. The first aircraft would cost us about 300 to 500 k, somewhere between that, to make, and R&D costs are separate.

Utsav Somani: Which is still not that bad if you think about it. Like, I mean, compared to, like, a aircraft and, I mean, how much ever a sea, ship would cost?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): That's true. I'm like, these are bigger and bigger systems. Right? I I've one of the fundamental thesis behind Aspera is that when you start when you start making the cost of flying so cheap, aggregation as a concept becomes moot. So you no longer need to carry you no longer need to make, need to make, like, massive vessels that can carry millions and millions of tons of cargo. You have to just make the cost of flying so cheap that the energy cost essentially remains the same despite, like, carrying about a thousand kg or, like, a million million tons.

Dhruv Sharma: Khushi, I'm wondering if, you know, we were to think of Eureka in terms of systems, subsystems, components, etcetera. Like, what is the level of detail we're looking at and, you know, how long is it gonna take to get there? Will there be partnerships along the way? Would you build everything by yourselves?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Right. So far, we plan to build most of the design, part of the aircraft ourselves and structures specifically. We don't plan to build our own autonomous system yet. That's the that's the one bit that takes the most to cert most to certify an aircraft. There's a lot of companies across the world that are just stuck because they've tried to build their own autonomous system and they're trying to go through certifications. It's a very, very hard thing to do. So we are trying to initially outsource the autonomy bit and do what we are best at, which is aerodynamic design and carbon fiber. So, in terms of the system level sort of breakdown, we have designed the aircraft. We've flown sub-scales, and we are building, like, system level, sort of understanding for each sub-scale going forward. We haven't gotten to the full-scale yet in terms of distributing this, systematic one, components, But that's something we want to get into in the next six to eight months, essentially.

Utsav Somani: In talking about autonomous systems, anywhere in the world, do you have autonomous, planes or anything of sort, like any cargo carrying vehicle in the world. I think those regulators will probably not like the word autonomous. Right?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Right. So there are a few companies that have figured it out in terms of last mile and middle mile both. There's a Greece based company, actually, which is pretty cool. It's called Dronamics. So they also operate in these, like, land and sea logged, areas. So they have, certified their aircraft and also have been doing multiple deliveries. It's a fairly large aircraft. I think, clearly, 200 kg, something like that. And they've been doing cargo deliveries autonomously, for a while now.

Dhruv Sharma: There's a question on a live chat from, one of our listeners, Suraj, Khushi. He wants to know if you track this company called Heart Aerospace, what do you think of the aircrafts? Yeah. I think

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): I recently saw their first aircraft flight. It's beautiful. Big fan. I'd love to connect with them and sort of just understand what they're doing, on the electric propulsion side a little more deeply. We don't plan to build our own engines for a while, so I think that's something that's fascinating me that there's finally a company company that's doing it at such a large scale.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. And when you were sorry.

Dhruv Sharma: There was just one other question there, I think, from the same listener, which is I I think they're asking about the endurance of Eureka, which maybe you've covered already.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Yeah. So it's a 2,000 kilometer range, aircraft. Right? Like, we travel in 2,000 kilometer distance. That's again like a Sri Lanka to Maldives sort of distance that we are looking at here or Japan to South Korea. The endurance time, if you're doing, like, a full 2,000 kilometer drive, that would be about seven point five to eight hours journey.

Utsav Somani: And when you were doing these tests in your 1:10 model, like, were there any assumptions that you, assume that would work but didn't work in that experiment?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Yeah. So a lot of things of course, we are delusionally optimistic enough to think that the aircraft would just fly in one go, which clearly did not happen. We have to crash a few planes to actually get it to fly in the right sort of scenario. But we realized a lot of things. We learned a lot of things about hydrofoils in general because hydrofoils was honestly one concept that we were walking in that we were walking in blind. It's something that we've done completely, like, engineered from a completely first principles mindset. There's not a lot of application that you see.

Utsav Somani: In in your video. Is that where it's inspired from?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Yeah. So a lot of the aircraft is actually inspired from the biomimicry of sharks, whales, and dolphins, specifically. And I love dolphins as an animal, very intelligent creatures. I actually have, like, a quick small miniature of my aircraft here. So if you see the side view, it looks very similar to that of a shark or a dolphin.

Utsav Somani: Wow. Nice.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Yeah.

Utsav Somani: Will you be able to show us a video of the test as well?

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): I can share it with you. It's a very crappy and a really really loud video, but we are posting it out very soon. I think, next week, hopefully. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: Awesome.

Dhruv Sharma: On this journey, Khushi, do you guys and and the question is not just for you and Aspera, but your peers as well. Do you guys sometimes find yourselves having to take advantage of these centralized testing facilities? I don't know for, like, wind tunnels and so on and so forth. I wanna get from you a sense of what the national infrastructure is to support entrepreneurship in this domain.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): So funny enough, we are actually exploring wind tunnels in India currently. There's unfortunately just two wind tunnels and both run by government organizations at the moment. So we've been trying to figure out, which sort of high speed tunnel that we can get access to here in India and what kind of test they help us provide. We want to test our aircraft on both aerodynamic and hydrodynamic front. So we do a lot of CFD in house specifically to prove that our numbers are actually correct and not something that we've made up with hand calculations. Right? So both the flight testing in person, like, the sub-scale flight testing really massively help, but there's always, like, a 30% error based on the kind of data that you're collecting and at what scale. Then we have CFD and then the national infrastructure that we're trying to access purely for aerodynamics right now, which is going to be wind tunnels. On the water end, we require, like, towing tanks, which are used by shipping based companies to basically simulate the hydrodynamics in water, essentially, like a wind tunnel equivalent. We haven't been able to find that in India yet, but, hopefully, someone will make it or we might end up building it in the next couple of months.

Dhruv Sharma: I hope all the TON listeners are listening are listening. There's something Khushi is looking for. All of us should get to work.

Utsav Somani: I think Khushi left the end segment. I have a personal question for you. So you were on a flight to Lucknow, and you were reading a Stephen Hawking book, and somebody noticed it. They got you an interview at Kalam Labs, and then you ended up shadowing Wes of Pixxel, who's now an investor in your company. Connect all these dots for us.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): I think, meeting Sabia, auntie, the lady who's found me on the airplane, was probably the most life moving thing that has happened to me. I think about it quite a bit. Like, I don't know if I would be here if it wasn't for her, or maybe it might have been much later down the line and not as a twenty now twenty three year old build building the company. Right? So I'm super grateful for that opportunity. I spent about six months at Kalam Labs, probably the best time of my life. It was amazing to see these, like, three BITS Pilani founders. It was a massive house. Like, they built inside a house. All the employees used to live there. So, like, 20 men and me, one one girl, going in, going into work there for my internship in the school uniform. That was amazing. But Kalam Labs did change my life. It made me it sort of increased the threshold of ambition. You know? Like, I realized that these are things that I can do physically, and I don't need to need to get a degree to get here, essentially. Then Awais is, of course, incredible. Like, he's incredible storyteller. He's run he's built something very, very meaningful and very ambitious. So I have massive respect for him and just very grateful that he let me shadow him.

Utsav Somani: Congrats to Ace as well today. He's just announced a $100,000,000 as well by Temasek and, another space tech fund. Yeah. Awesome, Khushi. Thank you so much for coming on our show. Let's go make this vision a reality.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Thank you.

Dhruv Sharma: All thanks.

Khushi Mittal (Aspera Industries): Thanks so much.

Utsav Somani: Bye. Alright, listeners. Moving on to our next guest. We've got Hemant from BGauss. Hemant, welcome to the show.

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): Hi. Thank you so much, Absa. Sure to see you.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. So I think let's start. Like, how do I mean, your family business, RR Global is making copper wires and many other things, and now you're selling electric two-wheelers. How did that happen?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): Yeah. I think, so in our family, that's our wire and cable business. Then we make another copper wire. We make copper tubes. And, it is, it is way more established. It's way more grown over the period of time, and it's always that we we should start our own entrepreneurship journey as well someday. Right? So I think this was one of the most entrepreneurship journey which I started. I started thinking this business since two thousand eighteen, nineteen. Started coming into execution since 2020. So it's been six years that I'm doing this business now. But if you see overall, it's a, it's a product driven business. It's a distribution driven business. It's a brand driven business. Right? So basic philosophy things comes around that. And since we come from electrical industry, we had some knowledge about the product, how to do this, how to make around it. And ultimately, we feel that, when I look at this business, I try to divide it into three categories. Right? So I tried to divide it into one is the manufacturing supply chain and your, product. The second half is a distribution, third off with a brand. So that's how it divide us. And we feel that a, when I when I look at this business of that angle point of view, I think we have been doing the same thing since in the other established group business from overall ethos point of view. I think that leads us to this space. And, I entered this business really early in the the where, where we knew that you have ten years to convert this industry, which is gonna happen from ICE engine to EV. So since I was early, so I can say that that helped me a lot to be at bar on the product side with many of the people. And I think it's a good journey which I which we selected, and it's a great booming business.

Dhruv Sharma: Even given that, you know, you're you're building, electric two-wheelers, I'm I'm I'm thinking if, you know, you begin with the with an end in mind. If you think that, you know, these are gonna we're gonna sell these B2C for consumers for their everyday use, or we're gonna send sell them B2B because they'll form part of EV fleets. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): No. It's a combination of both. A of course, B2C is always, for the little bits, are always a larger market. That's the almost 90% of the market practically, which is there. So you can't miss that. And And B2B is a very, very important market, which gives you, and it's a very different and tough market. It's not that easy market because, you know, quick commerce. How quick commerce changed the entire mechanism to India? Previously, you used to wait for one day. Used to order one day prior. The three wheeler cargo used to come and deliver you all the package together. Now you don't have similar patience. Right? You get delivered in ten, ten, ten minutes. And if you want delivered in ten minutes, the only way is two-wheeler. So the gig worker economy is helping this B2B business to scale up very faster, which eventually, I think, giving a good thought to look at B2B as a important factor, as a space to it. But the largest and the biggest segment, if you if you talk to me, is about the B2C.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Interesting. And you call your RUV 350 a rider utility vehicle. How is that different from a two wheeler? So, when you try to position your telethon service that a,

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): there is scooter, there is bike. Now this is a 16-inch-wheel product, which is like a motor scooter. Right? But, how do you want to position yourself? Okay. You don't want to call it a scooter. You don't want to call it as a bike. So can we create a category, of which we call it RUV as a category? So if you've seen four wheeler, you have SUV, MUV, CUV, all those kind of, this thing. In two-wheeler, they'll go out. Either scooter or it's a bike. Right? So this is a category creation which you want to do. We call a 16-inch wheel as a segment or a motor scooter as a step through segment as a RUV as a segment. And that's how the name came in as RUV.

Dhruv Sharma: And customers who are coming to you to to buy the, the scooters, Hemant, is is this for many of them, their first purchase of a scooter? Is this are they just making another addition to their garage or thinking of it as just, you know, utility sort of optionality item in the garage? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): So, usually, the early people who will buy this kind of product are the one who is having the who has either used scooter before. Right? Usually, the first buyer usually won't buy, EV two-wheeler. Right? They will always buy usually, the one who's using scooter will take as a second option as a student because still people are getting used to it with the range anxiety, how to charge, where to charge. So to come out of that range anxiety, which is happening now very fast. Right? Now you will see a lot of first time buyers are also entering into the, EV purchase. Till now it was more about someone who's having the second buy or third buy. Who knows that fine if I have to travel for long distance, he may he may try to use the ICE engine product. But now with the big range of products coming in, the most stable product coming in, they are happy to now you will see a lot of first time buyers also getting into EV as a product.

Utsav Somani: We've not given you a chance. I mean, you spoke about RUV 350, but maybe introduce the full BGauss, portfolio. And where do you sit in the whole, EV two wheeler ecosystem?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): So, a, we have three products, and I think I can begin to say that we are the one of the only companies who have three platforms who have launched in last three years. Right? So we have our family scooter, which we call our C12. That's our core B2C selling product. Okay? And, that's our C12 as a family scooter. It is very, very beautiful as good as any other ICE engine product. You will ride you will find it's a similar way of riding and experiencing of it. Then we have RUV, which is more like a rider utility vehicle. Right? So it's very rugged. It's a metal body steel. It has TFT screen. You can do off road very, very easily on that product. So it is majorly for the utility purpose. You try to you have created your RUV as a category of product or segment. And then we have OoWah. Okay. So OoWah is a product, which is, for us, it is for young boys and girls. Right? So it's a it has been designed so beautifully. It's, it's a little lighter in weight, very, very easy to maneuver and, good to write. Right? So it has been the category. The design is such It is very good for your boys and girls. And, also, the same platform of OoWah, we have developed our gig economy worker product as well. So that's the way, your our product composition is coming at this point of time for us.

Utsav Somani: Price ranges for all of these quickly?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): So, we our average selling price would be, say, anything from 95,000 to 1 lakh 40,000. So that's our price bucket. So, price which we try to focus on.

Dhruv Sharma: Even they've picked something from your website to ask you because it's just super interesting, which is the reverse mode in in your e scooters. And so very often, people will, you know, and they'll ask you all the downsides to owning an EV but not realize that with these bidirectional electric motors, there are certain advantages as well. So talk to us about not just reverse mode, but certain other hidden advantages of owning these vehicles.

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): There are so many. A, irrespective of anything come, what happened? We say saving is very so saving is one of the biggest factor which comes with ED. Your cost of running per kilometer is so low. It's practically one tenth of the high situation when we do. Second, there are a lot of smart features which you can play with in in EV. Right? Once you've set reverse mode, where you're parked in a very tight parking area and how you want to remove it. So it helps you to take it a little back for, like, five, ten, fifteen meters. If you want to take it back, you can use it those features in a in a nicer way. I will give you one very important feature as well. Like, you are traveling somewhere. Now you can switch off the entire vehicle, okay, and go out, and no one will be able to move your radio. So such kind of features are possible in ED as a as a category. Then there are there are a lot of connected features, which is part of this particular thing. So you can do you can do keyless entries. So there are so many features which drives which battery anytime gives you that option to liberty to do that. I think that's that's one of the big advantages of EV as a sector.

Utsav Somani: And talk to us about battery tech in this world. Like, what, tech are you using lithium-ion? And how do you think about fixed batteries versus swappable batteries? And where is the ecosystem overall in India? And how can we drive it further?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): See, usually in India, now, previously, everyone used to use NMC as a chemistry. Okay. In lithium-ion. Okay. Now in lithium-ion, okay, people are moving to the LFP as a chemistry. Okay. There's a chemistry change which is happening more into the, in the lithium-ion space only. Okay. In India, the predominantly lithium-ion space battery. It's not a lead acid driven, market. It's a lithium-ion driven market because the life is way longer. Life is much better. And, in this, the fixed battery and swappable battery both has its own advantage and disadvantage. Right? And I divide into three parts, not only two parts. Fixed battery, removable battery, and swappable battery. So, fixed battery, you will usually get a bigger battery so that you can have a better range. You can, you can create and plus, it will give you a better boot space as well because it goes into the four port fixed battery usually. Coming to the removable battery. Suppose you don't have a charging infrastructure very close to your gate. You want to charge it just five meters away. Suppose you have a shop. You are parked outside, but you don't have a parking out there. Right? So you can you but you need to take five meters or 10 meters to your shop and charge this. So you can remove the battery and charge it. So we call it the removable battery. And swappable battery is basically used more into B2B gig-worker economy because in that space they are they're running out of time to deliver. They want to run practically 120, 150 kilometer a day. And they don't want to have that kind of range anxiety where will I sit and charge the vehicle irrespective of how fast charge you give. It will take you one hour or two hours. They don't want to spend their earning time. Right? So then what they will do is they will quickly go swap and go into the, and try to deliver the product and make maximum earning out of it. Hence, I'd make sure that all different use cases are there. Depends upon what consumer, requires. You need to have that portfolio with you to deliver that.

Dhruv Sharma: I'm gonna follow-up, Utsav's question, Hemant, and ask you from from your seat as a vehicle OEM, how are you seeing the charging infrastructure improving its network density? Talk to us about office complexes, residential complexes, fuel pumps. We're talking about battery swapping earlier. The whole thing. We'd love to know.

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): I think charging infrastructure is improving everywhere now. I'm sure every buyer or every office space person now, wherever they go, first thing they ask how many charging station you have. Right? Or because that's going to be an integral part of the system, and it's coming up very fast. But for two-wheeler, let me tell you, it's not that simple. For four wheeler, yes. For three wheeler, yes. But for two-wheeler, it's pretty easy because you can charge this vehicle at any 5A socket, like, like your smartphone, like your iPhone or, like, your Samsung phone. You can just go charge anywhere, wherever you want to in any 5A socket. Hence, for two-wheeler, the impact is for the charging infrastructure is not that high as compared to the four wheeler. But I think the charging infrastructure business is growing up very fast, and we can see all across. Now if you travel from one destination to another destination, I think you will see you open an app, you have 10,000 chargers available to charge yourself. So I think the infrastructure is going very fast.

Utsav Somani: And India, I mean, account I mean, India basically accounts for 7%, of the EV, two wheeler sales are, EV bikes right now. How does it go to 20%? Like, what's the hurdles that they have to cross?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): What's up? This industry is growing at very fast pace. Right? If you see from April to now, you need the industry. Practically on y o y basis, it has grown by 70%. Can you imagine a industry growing by 70%? Okay. And that's that's how fast rapid it is happening. And when you see you talk about overall two-wheeler market of 7% getting converted, but you divide it from a scooter and, scooter and bike. Then you will see the scooter market is almost 20% down of the, normal scooter we used to get sold. Right? So, it is growing very fast. It is growing very rapidly. This industry is growing, I think it it is it has very good tailwinds to grow fast faster.

Dhruv Sharma: When we started our segment today, Hemant, you spoke about product distribution brand. Our product was obviously, you know, your your DNA even you know? I mean, it was just in the DNA, but I'm sure there have been many learnings, when it comes to distribution and brand. Can you share them with for the benefit of founders who tune into our show?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): I think the eventually, we feel that everything is about distribution and brand. Right? Product is a way to start. Distribution is very, very important. More the touch points you have, it is it is who was gonna pay a board pay than road pay. Right? So you need to be at the board first and make sure that how fast you can grow that particular thing. Brand is a process. Okay. It cannot happen overnight. It's a it's a journey what we believe. Okay. And, it's not like any more like in real before the, digital era where the brand-making was very longer period of time. Now the time period of man breaking also much shorter, compared to others. But still it's a larger journey. Right? So I think it's about it's it's a sequence. So first is the product, supply chain, manufacturing. Get yourself fixed time there. Then you, and your distribution network. And then I think it goes towards the brand side of it. It's a journey. We need to be patient about

Utsav Somani: it. And as a final closing one, Hemant, any plans of starting export? Because Southeast Asia is also a big, two wheeler market. Right?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): Southeast Asia is a very good two-wheeler market. Of course, export is always a market to think around. We are doing in some couple of countries already, but, still not yet entered into Southeast Asia market. But, hopefully, one day we may look at that space as well.

Utsav Somani: What are the other big, two-wheeler markets in the world?

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): See, the biggest is China, India and Southeast Asia, then South America, Africa, then Europe. Right? So that's the thing. But, Southeast Asia is the market, but I think it will take time to go there. It's not that, first, we have so much of work to do here. Let's set our ground much more lighter here and then go towards the export market to South Asia kind of market.

Utsav Somani: Alright, Hemant. Thank you so much for coming on TON. Wishing you the best ahead.

Hemant Kabra (BGauss): Thank you so much. Bye. Bye.

Utsav Somani: Alright, listeners. Moving on to our final guest, we've got Sachin from YOGa Clean Air. Sachin, welcome to TON. I think you're on mute.

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): Hi,

Utsav Somani: Good to have you on the show. Do you wanna explain what YOGa Clean Air does to our listeners?

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): Thank you. Thank you so much, So, I mean, we at YOGa Clean Air, we just, take pollution away from people's lives. This is what we do day and night. And this we we are doing since 2010. And finally, in 2019, we had something which was very, very, like, you know, we got this confidence. Like, you know, we can keep pollution away from people living in Delhi and they were worrying about this too much. We can, you know, make them not to worry about the pollution at all. So we were able to deliver kind of air quality, which is comparable to, places like Finland and some other parts of Europe. This is what we started. So still, I mean, people call it a product company. We we we don't call it a product company. We are more of a servicing entity, which comes into a commitment, keeps this commitment forever. This is what we do.

Utsav Somani: And we're talking about, just for our listeners, indoor air.

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): Right? Yes. Indoor air. So, I mean, our background is basically in both, but we majorly, focus on indoor air quality. So even, this is not about indoor air quality also. So, like, you know, we started digging more much deeper into it. This is all about exposure. How much you are exposed to air pollution. Air pollution can be in inside your car. It can be in your home. It can be outside. Whatever is the total exposure that you you basically get, you know, living in these kind of cities. This is what we started mapping and started developing solution for. So largest area, you you are basically 90% indoor. And, also, you know, it was quite challenging to peep make people understand. People were thinking the moment they are out of their house, they are actually outdoor. It's that's not true. I mean, either you're in a car or a bus or a metro, you know, something that, there is basically that that particular environment is actually indoor. So we started developing solution for each and every part of it. And kind of commitment that we do to, so we see we don't market our solution at such. So you'll not find them much, on media and other places. But our clients know, we were able to take care of, like if we say single digit in their house and outside is touching thousand, that is also there in their car, offices, schools. This is how it's been going on. So we were mapping the exposure and controlling the, you know, controlling it for them. So yoga also stands for your own green area. This is basically defining your standards for, you know, environment wherever you live. This is how this started actually, this concept.

Dhruv Sharma: Your own green area. That's fascinating.

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): So can

Dhruv Sharma: you say the company started in 2009?

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): 2010, actually.

Utsav Somani: 2010.

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): So that it was, like, like, you know, kind of a good beginning. I was working in Nestle. I left the job. Three of my friends, one was studying in UK. I called him in, and we went and, you know, pitched our idea at IIT Delhi. There was a professor of ours, basically, who was actually so I was, like, inclined to do my, you know, to join him as a, like, research assistant to do some work there. This is how it started, actually. And he was a professor for indoor air quality, actually. That's how they all conversation started, and we we thought maybe we can, you know, make some dent into it. So, getting inspiration from lots of PhD students right there, doctor Radha, doctor Priyanka, they were the first to write basically indoor air quality. So honestly, speaking academically, we were very advanced in indoor air quality. I mean, one of the, landmark studies were done basically in India only, and people were actually referring to Indian context of indoor air quality. This is how it was, like, basically, you know, perceived. Then there was a time basically when these green buildings started coming the glass building started coming to, you know, this part of earth. So everything, you know, went for a toss. We never realized what kind of things we were talking about. People were still going to the offices and, you know, with the good environmental factor like, you know, temperature, humidity, everything was controlled much better, much better environment. Even some with some filtration air was much better, but they were feeling claustrophobic. When they used to go out from those building, they used to feel fresh. What was that thing? This is how, you know, we got curious about this entire kind of, you know, concept. This is how our beginning, you know, were initially so we we became an auditor, basically. So we we developed some tool to audit the buildings. And, you know, we started vetting the solution. This is how it started. And normally, the clients are either the government or, you know, the bigger players who wanted to, you know, try out the air-purifier market in India or, like, mostly the expats. This is how it started. Some of the companies we very well remember in India, they wanted to go for indoor air quality audit, but somehow they were bought by some Indian entity and they started saying, yeah, we don't really need this air in India. So this this is how, you know, the, air quality was perceived over the years, basically. Now there's a big change. I mean, me, you, everybody's talking about the newspaper clips and AQI touching so much. And so there's a big difference between AQI and IAQ, but still we are happy at least people are talking about IAQ. This is how how it started in 2017. We had, like, kind of it because we were actually doing some R&D for a lot of companies. So, we we had a breakthrough as we wanted to control CO2. And somehow we realized, like, PM is actually absolutely flat line. There was no spike. It used to be like, you know, earlier, the door is opening. The values used to to shoot up, and then it used to take us to, you know, get them down. Now this was the time when it actually stayed flat lined. We developed something that took our entire balcony, actually. This was a kind of experiment for ourselves, basically. And then I realized, like, and like, all of a sudden, one of the purifier in one of my bedroom actually got off. Somebody, you know, took out the plug of that purifier, and still the values are maintained. Then we took that plunge, put everything off. The values are still 200, two fifty, basically, in, month of, January, and still the values are maintained. That's how we started realizing something is happening, and we started working behind it. So we named this this entire principle as clean air bubble. This is how it started. 2019, I think just before COVID. So we had we we had this conversation. Can do we still want to be the consulting agency? Because we were approaching companies. They were slightly reluctant. Nobody wanted to take that plunge in service, you know, and really wanted to everybody was interested in some off the know, shelf kind of a product, which can be pushed to the people. But so this was also coming, you know, you realize every year, biggest company we are talking about here in India, December, everybody is out of the filter. And then it takes them for, like, about a month or forty five days to, you know, refill that, filters basically in this because nobody's priority is actually filter or servicing. So we were only talking about something. This is how it started basically hitting us. What it has to be basically a kind of a servicing organization where we get into a commitment, and the product has to be air, not a dapa, not something like that. This is how this started, actually.

Utsav Somani: There are at least two people in my building who have YOGa Clean Air, and my intention reaching out to people on LinkedIn after I read up what your, investment was to actually have you on you wanna also get a discount code for myself, and five of my friends who have it. Unfortunately, because, I wish the air quality and the infrastructure or the government, was doing enough to give us clean air in our city. But this clean air bubble concept, like Yeah. High pressure, low pressure, please explain that to us in simple terms.

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): So, in simple terms, it's basically the principle was earlier used in some kind of, you know, summary and also this was concept was used, basically. So and citadels and all. People used to have the high pressure and low pressure zone. So typically, we started understanding the, you know, the, built spaces first. What is the challenge in our built spaces? So typically, let let's take an example of your apartment or my apartment. So we have ACs running. We have exhaust fan. We have chimneys in our house. We have also fans. So so imagine, like, they will certain let's say, the entire box size is, 1,000 cubic feet. The volume of air it fill is basically 10,000 cubic feet. Maybe 10 feet is I've taken the exemption. 10 feet is the ceiling height. So this 10,000 fuse cubic feet air is basically being pushed out constantly either from exhaust fan, either from, you know, the ACs are also sucking that air and creating a vacuum in that air. So that vacuum which has been created or the air which has been thrown out from the exhaust fan or chimney is actually going to be replaced. Now you don't have control actually from where this is going air is going to be get replaced. Maybe it'll be the, like, nearest corner of your house or maybe under the door, the air will pass pass through. Maybe it will come from from the, you know, the washroom exhaust shaft on the so this is how the air gets, you know, basically ingress in our house. And the air which increased from the outside without your control can be very polluted, actually. So that's how it is. This is basically we are talking about a normal surroundings. Now let's talk about surroundings in Delhi NCR where PM can actually go, like, more than 2,000 micrograms per cubic metre also. So we have recorded that kind of a values. On an average, this is, like, year round average comes down to be close to 100. And WHO was talking about, like, let's keep it less than 15. Let's keep it less than 10, basically. Their larger goals are now saying, let's push it less than 10 microgram average, basically, for throughout the year. This is how they are pushing. And they're also labeling only, like, one percent of the population has this exposure. So then we started basically starting that now now let's come come I am coming back to the principle how it was working. So what we did basically, this ingress which was coming from outside constantly, we thought about that. We thought how much this could be basically, and if we can supply it from a center source in your house. So we started supplying that much of air, which is basically going to be ingress, plus some extra air for your because you are also constantly exhaling CO2 in the air. How to basically control? This is how we started doing so. Positive and negative pressure in our terms is basically the excess air. This is like, you know, a balloon and you are actually inflating it by pumping more air into that balloon. And if there are multiple holes also in that, balloon, basically, if you are inflating it more, it'll still be, you know, remain inflated. This is how it works, basically, clean air bubble concept. So now we have actually removed dependency on the door movement. If you are the doors are moving very frequently, the air will only go out. Nothing will basically come from the outside, which is not in your control. And now this air, which is being left in your house, is basically started diluting. It's kind of a titration. Like, you know, you you basically you know, you put a, dirty, glass of water under a tap and open the taps for maybe for a minimum, capacity. The fresh or the clean water, which will come drop by drop after certain time, it'll actually absolutely clean. That water will be drinkable, absolutely drinkable. This is how it works in a clean air bubble also. The time it takes to make the air absolutely serene or, like, in single, is it actually fifty five minutes? The moment you shut down everything and everything is in control, it takes fifty five minutes. And it'll be, like even if it was, like, thousand outside, it'll be it'll make it single digit in that that much of time. This is how it works.

Utsav Somani: Area that you can cover safely?

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): One unit cover, 1,500 square feet, but we we cover like, we have done buildings of 10 lakhs square feet kind of spaces also. This is how it works. So, Amit, this is the smallest unit. Currently, we have we are also developing another unit, but the current unit covers 1,500 square feet. In the smallest size, then we have, like, multiple of 3,000 square feet, 4,000 square feet, 10,000 square feet kind of units are ready in stocks always. But this is our standard unit, which covers 1,500 square feet of space. Nothing remains inside. Inside, it's just a vent, basically, which is there. Otherwise, everything is outside. And and and, so, you know, it was a quite a challenge, actually. So this one first unit that we made, we also, like it was working, but we realized nobody's going to, you know, install it in their houses. It took entire balcony. The size is basically eight feet by four feet. This was what the size. Now we have compressed it to a very small powerful machine, which is absolutely one foot by one foot and two feet long. If we like in terms of comparison, if we have to basically visualize it, it's actually much smaller than your outdoor AC unit. And we simply hung up in your balcony, hide it in your shaft, which is a clean air shaft. They need to suck the air from out outside. We need to have the absolutely low CO2 air from outside. This is how it works. And then it pumps inside from any like, we don't need to spread ducting in your house because we have done, like, just to be because people start started thinking this is, like, not possible. This is unbelievable. But we always our job was basically to show up. Do people themselves realize this is the kind of air can be achieved with the minimalistic intervention in their houses? This is how it started actually.

Dhruv Sharma: Fascinating. Sachin, we're maybe one or two months away from pollution season, from the onset of pollution season. What are some common sense tips, you know, we can learn from you? I mean, clearly installing YOGa Clean Air at home is is the best tip. But for those of us who will take a while to get there, what can we be doing to safeguard ourselves in the next two to three months?

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): Okay. So, you know, we were working on it since very long time. This is all about exposure controlling. So and I personally believe air pollution, you know, living in air bad air quality is kind of a personal choice. Living in good air quality is also a personal choice. So now imagine, like, it makes a lot of difference for people who live in these polluted environments that constantly keep their house shut because there's a misnomer. Pollution comes from outside. You'll not be able to control it like doing like that way. Maybe you'll end up breathing more CO2, which will actually create a lot of burden on your health system. This is how it works. There's another way because we also trap the pollutant which has been released from your chimney. So very simple example. If you're cooking in your, kitchen actually, and you can smell the paratha smell in your bedroom, this is air quality problem. If you are, you know, burning lots of camphor in your house after subtle so we have to understand There's a very big difference between air purification and air sterilization. Camphor is a air sterilizing unit, basically. So when there is a humidity after, like, rainy season, it's okay to run you know, use them for a while for two, three days and all, but you can't be putting a handful of camphor in a burner and you're burning them. It's actually a pollutant. Also, the incense thing. You really don't know what kind of composition they have. So this is basically you end up breathing more polluted air than, you know, you should be breathing in a normal, like, you know, standard environment. Also, I mean, any intervention is a, like, good intervention. It doesn't matter. Whatever you do, you should try to protect yourself. First and the first thing is basically changing your behavior. So imagine people waking up every morning and the particles settle down on the floor. And all of us live, you know, nicely, people who live in Delhi and see how their floors are marble and whatever. Right? They're cemented floors. There there there's no, looseness which is coming from there. Every morning, we pick up a broom and, you know, resuspend this dust bag. Wet moping could do that job. You know? And and I'll be very honest to say this. People who come from outside India, they actually practice only wet mopping here in India. And we are obsessed with doing because there are many things associated with this. Our parents will say, okay. There are some traditions or we have hired some maid just to do that. So this is how we have been wired. So we can really cut down our exposure by doing such things. We also, like, you know, we did an experiment in when he, this was in a school in, Gurgaon only. So this was a preschool and the parents were dropping their kids at 07:30 morning in October and November. You really need not to drop a pre kids school at nine 07:30. Maybe school is very should be flexible enough to change the timing from 09:30 to 10:10AM onwards. Also, we have seen many school doing this sports activity early in the morning hours. Even if the shift is sports period or maybe in a light activities in afternoon, the exposure will be cut down to one third. There are simple without any, like, you know, spending not a heavy on your pocket kind of a solution that anybody can practice. Apart from that, anything and everything you do. I mean, walking on a by lane instead of walking directly on the, main street is actually also cut down your exposure by 30%. This is how these are simple tricks that people can adopt in their life. Specifically, you know, people who really think, you know, they are immune to air pollution and, you know, taking that plants, going on roads and parks early morning in people is not a nice idea, actually. Because immunity so I'll be I'm a biotechnologist by profession. Can easily say this. Immunity doesn't come from inert particles like dust, you know, rubber particles or something which have been combusted. You will not get immunity from them. You only get immunity from, you know, which is something, you know, live. Some microbial, growth or some bacteria, viruses, all those things from there you get immunity, not from, you know, the inert they are going to get deposit in your lungs. And lung has a capacity. Like, after some time, it'll wear out or you'll not be able to, you know, it'll not be able to sustain you for a longer period. This is how it is.

Utsav Somani: And, Sachin, and a quick one to close this out, where can people learn more about your service, and how much do they pay you for that 1,500 square foot capacity coverage?

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): Okay. So, Amit, we charge, 1 lakh 55,000 plus taxes for this this intervention. And next year, we charge 18,000 plus taxes for this intervention. And this includes everything except electricity, which will be one unit per day. And these all run 24/7, 365 days. There is no off period. And this is a misnomer. Like, you know, in rainy season, air quality is actually good. So, I mean, many of the European countries shut down at this kind of air quality. It was still, you know, forty, thirty kind of this. If you can so idea is to begin long term to keep your exposure down. For example, there are many people who are lung sensitive. So maybe thousands of them, which are basically currently this cell. And the moment we started maintaining their PM level, PM exposure, we cut down it to less than 10. CO2 less than 700. There was a big difference on their health. They're not getting that trigger that is they used to get every year in India. So, I mean, that problem changes. I've I know personally many people who come from you know, who are not likely to visit this the Delhi NCR because of this pollution season and who escaped basically this kind of this is a basically business loss for them. This is economy loss for even India, basically, if they don't stay here. This is how you know, it's been going on. So we can actually reduce that by adopting these kind of solutions. And we get that commitment. It's basically not not on you. So most of the people, if you'll ask them, they have now forgotten about the air quality because what they get, what they see is a third-party monitoring device, and they can track that data for every single minute. And we would like to come into that commitment and maintain the air quality forever, whatever long they wanted to maintain that.

Utsav Somani: Perfect, Sachin. Thank you so much. I'm wishing you the best.

Sachin Panwar (YOGa Clean Air): Thank you so much. Yeah. Cheers.

Utsav Somani: Alright, listeners. That's it from us. We'll see you, same time on Wednesday. Bye bye.