Meet the Indian startup behind the electric fleet of India's top e-commerce companies

Advertisement
Meet the Indian startup behind the electric fleet of India's top e-commerce companies
  • Gayam Motor Works was founded in 2011 by brothers Raja and Rahul, along with Sri Harsha Bavirisetty.
  • Today, they are working with BigBasket, Flipkart, Grofers, BlueDart and several other players for last mile delivery.
  • The startup garnered attention from not just businesses but also the Telangana government.
Advertisement
Hyderabad-based Gayam Motor Works knows that electric is the future. And they have built three-wheeler electric autos for last mile delivery, which is being used in the trial phases of several e-commerce companies in India.

GMW was founded in 2011 by brothers Raja and Rahul, along with Sri Harsha Bavirisetty. Since their first pilot e-auto, the startup garnered attention from not just businesses but also the Telangana government.

They are also working with BigBasket, Flipkart, Grofers, BlueDart and several others. Their first customer was BigBasket to whom they delivered 20 vehicles in Gurgaon in 2017. Today, they have already delivered 750 vehicles to all the companies for trial runs.

“Everyone who is in distribution and wants to do last-mile delivery, we are working with them. From BigBasket we have an order for 1500 vehicles, Flipkart has given an order for 700,” said Raja.

Over the years, for GMW the journey has been a learning experience. “Usually electric vehicles are popular as e-rickshaws for short distance travel, but when it comes to last mile delivery or replacing the traditional auto rickshaw, it still hasn’t been done,” said Raja.

Advertisement

A major problem they continue to face is getting financing from banks for these vehicles, even though they have steady orders coming in from major e-commerce companies as well as the Telangana and AP governments.

“Recently, we are the first three-wheelers to get financing from banks for EVs,” he said. As the market still doesn’t exist for EVs, GMW even offers buyback agreement. But as a company they are moving from hundreds of vehicles to thousands, which banks see as a risky proposition.

See Also:
Watch: Jeff Bezos driving e-rickshaws, doing home deliveries, and chatting up Shah Rukh Khan ⁠— the Amazon top boss is going all out to get Narendra Modi’s attention
{{}}