From stars to the streets: The journey of PURE EV founder Dr Nishanth Dongari
From designing missiles to revolutionising India's EV market with clean, energy-driven two-wheelers, PURE EV’s Dr. Nishanth Dongari’s story is inspiring.
From the vast expanses of outer space to open roads, Dr Nishanth Dongari has always been driven by a passion for innovation and a desire to push boundaries to carve out a niche for himself. His passions have been fuelled by strong technical expertise in designing and building complex mobility systems.
In an exclusive interaction with LiveMint, Dr Dongari spoke about his journey of starting PURE, an acronym for Power Using Renewable Energy, and how he, along with his close friend and company co-founder Rohit Vadera, built a business on a foundation of strong fundamentals and accelerated growth from zero to the point where they stand today, as one of the country’s leading electric two-wheeler manufacturers with a pan-India presence.
Early life and education
Born in September 1986 in Suryapet, a small town in Telangana, located about 140 km away from Hyderabad, Dr Dongari spent his early years in his hometown. He was always inclined towards Math and mechanics. After completing his schooling, he set off for IIT Bombay at the tender age of 17, where he mastered the nuances of Mechanical Engineering with a B Tech degree. It is on this campus that the seed for PURE was sown. This is where he met his friend Vadera, who went on to be the co-founder of PURE several years later.
On campus, his peers would have never imagined that he would enter academia. Dr Dongari has spent almost 13 years as a professor at top technology institutes across the world. He set off for Germany and Switzerland from 2007-09, after which he moved to the University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom on the prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship in MEMS with secondments at Inficon AG (Europe) exclusively on thermal management of key electronic sensors: Battery Management, Automotive and Space, and at JLR (UK) on self-cleaning cameras.
Dr Dongari also worked on several research projects with PDSL in the domain of Automotive and Engineering during his time in the UK. These offered him a glimpse of how an International Automobile supply chain functions and also offered insights on the best R&D practices.
By the age of 26, he was ready to return to his roots. “After my PhD, I wanted to come back to India and, obviously, my first choice was my alma mater, IIT Bombay. At that time (~2012), IIT Hyderabad was shaping up like an early-stage start-up, where all the operations were going on in temporary sheds. Being born and brought up in Telangana, and being an emerging institute, I chose IIT Hyderabad over IIT Bombay and have been a professor there since the past 11 years,” Dr Dongari added.
Mission Mode
“My forte was more in high-altitude space and defence systems. From 2009-19, I spent all my time on high-altitude missiles and space shuttles. As soon as I joined IIT Hyderabad, I caught fire with the likes of Dr VK Saraswat (former DRDO Chief, current Member NITI Aayog) and Dr Satish Reddy (SA to RM, MoD, GoI) to work on the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) program: PDV, K4, AD 1, AD 2 and Mission Shakti at Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Missile Complex,” he said.
Dr Dongari has done extensive work on the design of thrusters, systems integration and thermal analysis of entire missiles, including the warheads, IR seekers analysis, algorithms/ software development using their supercomputer “Dhruva” at ANURAG, and batteries design, installation and thermal management for control units and operations.
“This is where I experienced what is called working under “mission mode” - to take a project from concept to design, to prototype, to going for the actual mission, at the Balasore Integrated Test Range (ITR) by working with a wide range of people comprising of senior scientists to assembly technicians (ITI/ Diploma) to engineers from hundreds of different suppliers from domestic and international, and indeed under time bounded fashion with the approved/ limited budgets,” he further added.
This is where he saw the real and emotional connection between what R&D does and delivers when working under enterprise mode and the large-scale strategic benefits it can bring to the community.
The founding journey
He had settled well into the academic routine, but life had other plans for Dr Dongari, whose paths crossed once again with Vadera in 2016 when the latter returned to Hyderabad to complete a degree in Management from ISB Hyderabad. “We both had an idea that we wanted to do something of our own. At that time, it was more on the lines of climate tech and energy storage systems. The lithium battery story was there right from day zero,” he said.
After completing his MBA, Vadera started working with Ostro Energy where he executed solar and wind energy projects to the tune of 2,000 MW. While the battery story inspired this entrepreneurial debut, the duo was looking at different applications of energy storage systems. They wanted to do more than build an engineering company and were looking to enter the consumer segment to create a brand that they could scale up over the next 5-10 years.
“EV two-wheeler emerged as the favourite choice for us for the value proposition offered from an Indian household perspective where two-wheelers have almost become family members. India is a middle-income country where the bulk of the population falls in this category. We felt even after 10-20 years, the demand for two-wheelers will stay up-beat with a significant growth story. This formed a strong basis to found PURE EV in 2018 at i-TIC IIT Hyderabad, which is an angel investor and founder shareholder,” he explained.
IIT Hyderabad formed a test bed for the company in its early years, as it was home to all the R&D and innovation done in the initial 2-3 years. This incubation program offered a significant fillip to this fledgling start-up, which got access to the entire IIT ecosystem, thereby optimising the initial product development cycles from 4 years to two years.
By 2018-19, the EV 2W segment was decently well-established, with more than 10 players already operating in the high-speed scooters and more than 100 players in the low-speed segment. “In the high-speed segment, however, long mileage products were not present and saw this as a great opportunity. If we are able to build a technology and user-experience-driven product and bring value for money for the consumer, we felt that there is a lot of scope and a skin in the game for us. We felt that the market is very huge with a lot of technological disruption expected over the next 5-10 years,” Dr Dongari said.
They launched their first high-speed scooter in 2020, making their entry into the sales space. From creating the right technology, the primary focus shifted to the next phase of the product cycle between 2020-22: driving sales with customer acquisition through organic methods, and their usage, vehicle up-time/ durability, user-experience feedback on performance and mileage, purchase and service experience etc.
Hitting bullseye with high-speed two wheelers
“Earlier, in the 1980s and early 90s, we would see one motorcycle for every 5 scooters. But, now, for every 5 motorcycles, you have one scooter. Scooters have hit a ceiling of 30-35 per cent in urban markets and 20-30 per cent in rural/ town markets. This is attributed not to mileage but to the form factor and the kind of comfort that a motorcycle offers for long-range driving. We envision that by 2027-30, motorcycles will dominate even within the electric segment,” he said.
Right from day one, Dr Dongari knew that electric motorcycles would dominate the EV space while electric scooters would act as low-hanging fruits for all start-ups. By 2021-22, the EV scooter market has already become crowded, with several players fighting for their share of the pie and all (except PURE EV) riding sales on massive subsidies and price cuts. The EV motorcycle market offered a window of opportunity for PURE EV to create a niche for themselves and started the development of eTryst and ecoDryft models in 2021 so that we can get a heads-up of 5-6 years over the incumbent players.
Soaring to new heights
PURE EV has come a long way and has become an established name in the two-wheeler EV market. It makes operating profits and is EBITDA positive. In terms of sales, PURE EV ranks at spot number 9-10 in pan India with a market share of 5-13 percent at a dealer RTO level. Overall sales numbers aside, electric two-wheelers by PURE EV fare very high (rank number 3) in terms of the number of km driven, which is a testament to their long mileage and durability.
“With a limited customer base of 70,000, the cumulative kilometres driven have crossed 200 crore km. So, that puts the company at number three today. In terms of cumulative sales, we would be in the top ten. But in terms of kilometres driven, we are at number three. Our customers are driving 46 km per day, which is the highest in the two-wheeler scooter segment, even above the most selling ICE 2W,” he said.
Talking about the journey thus far, Dr Dongari said: “So far, we have raised ₹200 crore so far in three different rounds in the form of equity and debt. We always felt we should focus on the product development, testing and supply chain in the initial few years, get the product right, understand the customer and identify your customer target base, and then have the right set of dealers in the beginning. This helped us understand the nuances of dealer dynamics, dealer sentiment, their RoI, P&L, after-sales service, the network, the spare parts availability, the customer recall, and strategically position them, and then aim for large-scale growth.”
Over the next decade, Dr Dongari expects the demand for electric motorcycles to scale up by 100X. The electric motorcycle market is divided into three parts – the premium segment, which is about 200 cc, the 125 cc segment and the 100 cc segment. The latter two comprise about 70 per cent of all motorcycles in India. “We are not looking at entering the premium segment for the next five years. We have positioned two new products for the other two commute segments – the ecoDryft 350 and the eTryst X. There will also be continuous innovations on powertrain and battery,” he said.
Recharging his personal energy
Every battery needs a proper recharge to give good mileage. We asked the man who works non-stop from morning 9 am to midnight about how he recharges himself to deliver his best at the workplace each day, and he is quick to reply: “I’m a big fan of Telugu cinema, and I haven’t missed a single movie in the last 10 years. My wife also joins me for each movie. We usually catch the morning benefit show at 5 am or 6 am. That’s a big side track for my mind in its busiest life cycle that it has seen over the last 5 years.”
Mythology has always fascinated Dr Dongari, and this led him to read the 7 kandas of the Ramayana and 18 parvis of the Mahabharata.
Start-ups are the flavour of the day, and Dr Dongari shared some golden words of wisdom with young entrepreneurs. “Create a strong vision initially and create a business model with fundamentals. And especially if you are coming into the engineering and technology segment, build your company for a long term of 15-20 years as the first 5 years of blood and sweat will go into establishing a manufacturing base, R&D, getting the products right and evolving the distributor network. Remember, every entrepreneur has to create his own journey and his own way of running the business. If your fundamentals are strong, you will definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel.”