As the commercial electric vehicle (CEV) space heats up in India, doors for new business opportunities are also opening up. Log9’s CEO Dr Akshay Singhal had a chat with EFY’s Mukul Yudhveer Singh on why they launched ‘Amphion’ to tap on such a major opportunity.
Q. What inspired the ‘Amphion’ move?
A. We have been managing close to 3000 electric vehicle assets with Log9 batteries for a long time now. As the industry started to know about the same more and more, a lot of requests came our way for managing EVs in fleets. These generally include managing vehicles and other assets that are not connected with Log9 tech.
Q. How did you decide to enter the segment?
A. The challenges faced by the industry are what made us decide to enter the segment. That is why we came up with a new brand, one that is separate from Log9. We have been managing assets that do not have Log9 batteries in them for three months now.
Q. What challenges are you looking to address via Amphion?
A. Vehicle financing and leasing are a part of the challenge. The bigger part of the challenge for every fleet owner is the uptime of the vehicle. Missing a day or two due to an error or any other reason usually results in huge penalties for them.
Q. Please elaborate on that.
A. The average servicing time for an electric two- and a three-wheeler is over 18 days in India at the moment. This is for cases which require change of a part and issues associated with the same. A commercial EV having to spend 18 days off the road would mean no profits for the entire year because of the penalties involved.
In such cases, fleet owners need to have a team dedicated to taking care of the maintenance and service parts, which is also an added cost to them. We have been able to maintain an average service TAT (turn around time) of less than 2.5 days.
Q. Are there more challenges apart from the maintenance and service?
A. Yes, the availability of the proper EV charging ecosystem is a challenge. Then, for fleet owners looking to venture into geographies, finding finance organisations as well as the right dealers is a big challenge! This is followed by the added burden of getting the vehicles registered and insured. These are all added costs for a fleet owner. Even selling the vehicle in the used market and predicting good health for the battery is a challenge!
Claiming asset management capabilities and not being able to deliver uptime leads to lot of issues between fleets and leasing companies, which results in defaults on lease payments, penalties being adjusted into lease payments, and eventually large NPAs in the ecosystem, which keeps on increasing the risk and hence the cost of capital, further making the entire ecosystem too costly and unsustainable.
Q. Are all the services being offered by Amphion? What are the benefits?
A. Apart from these, there are some other services under the Amphion brand, but those largely remain under this big umbrella. The biggest benefit for fleet owners is the saved cost per month, which is in the range of `7000 to `8000 per vehicle. It can also be measured in the extra time they can give to adding more business. This is the time they are saving by not concentrating their efforts on the challenges we have discussed.
Q. But what reduces their costs?
A. We have direct leverage with the vehicle makers. Then, we can predict a battery’s health using the tech that we have built. It throws over 30 crucial data points every second. The tech can also be used to suggest better driving behaviours in order to increase the mileage of a vehicle.
Q. You mentioned the collection of data. Do you equip these vehicles with some device?
A. Data is collected from all the vehicles we manage. In the case of assets with a Log9 battery, these batteries send data. We also work with partners such as Bosch and Zero Carbon. We do not work with any products that do not throw any data.
| Amphion is an EV mobility solutions arm of battery tech startup Log9, full-stack EV asset management that includes EV financing, leasing, data and analytics, charging infrastructure, energy efficiency, health checks, and more. |
Q. But aren’t there a lot of players in this arena?
A. There is a big difference between saying someone does it and saying someone actually does it! Technological capability is one of the prime requirements for managing a fleet of EVs. Then, there must be a dedicated operational layer across the country and a team only looking into analysing data. A lot of companies claim to do it because it helps them charge a higher lease of finance amount for the same. But what they do when customers reach out to them for penalties is tell them it was an error on the customer’s part! A lot of companies do it to only increase their internal rate of return (IRR). (Note: IRR is used as a metric to estimate the profitability of potential investments.)
Q. Are you also taking non-performing assets into consideration?
A. At the moment, we are only working with fleet owners and not individual owners. The minimum number of vehicles per fleet for us is five. In the NPA part, we address the same with a calculative approach, which includes understanding the reason behind an asset becoming an NPA. If we are unable to continue operations with a particular fleet owner, we refurbish the vehicles and deploy them to a new fleet owner.
Q. Which geographies of India are you present in?
A. We are operational in 27 cities in India, which include Tier 1, 2, and 3 geographies and regions. These include places like Surat, Coimbatore, Barely, Varanasi, and more. We are now getting a lot of collaboration requests from vehicle makers. A lot of Tier 2 and 3 cities are opening up for this demand.
Q. What is the process for onboarding vehicle makers?
A. One of the prime requirements is that of data integration. This means that the vehicles they make should be able to generate and send data. The second is service integration. There must be a proper process for handling services and spares. In case of a vehicle requiring service or spare change, the vehicle maker needs to facilitate the spare parts to the service partners authorised by us. Fleet owners trying to do the same via a dealer is usually an inefficient process.
Q. Is the availability of financing funds required for electric vehicles still persistent in India?
A. While it is still a challenge, it is now a smaller one. If a fleet owner wants to expand their base from Haryana to Uttar Pradesh, Amphion can provide financing for the same. This is also a challenge that we are working to address. There are multiple financiers and dealers working with us. They are helping us solve the challenge.
Q. What kind of EVs is Amphion managing at the moment?
A. Our platform is managing four-, three-, as well as two-wheelers. Four-wheeler EVs constitute a very small share as there are not many available in the commercial EV category. The rest is split equally between two- and three-wheeler EVs. We are targeting to manage assets worth over `5 billion by the end of this fiscal.
