[00:00:00 – 00:00:07] Nitin Bajaj

Welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Dinesh Arjun. Dinesh, welcome on the show.

[00:00:08 – 00:00:10] Dinesh Arjun

Thanks for having me, Nitin. Really appreciate it.

[00:00:10 – 00:00:13] Nitin Bajaj

This is amazing. Let’s start with who is Dinesh.

[00:00:15 – 00:01:29] Dinesh Arjun

Awesome. I’m an engineer by background, born and raised in Chennai. RAPT actually is my third venture. I’ve been into automotive retail and manufacturing for about a little over a decade now. Did my undergrad here in Chennai in in in production engineering, got an opportunity to do my masters in The US. I did another degree in industrial engineering at Purdue. Started an opportunity to work with Tesla for a while. My dad was an academician. I asked my dad to retire, asked him to come out, gave my business over to him, and and left me to my master’s, did my master’s, got an opportunity to work with Tesla for a while. I was in a temporary role at Tesla managing two production lines for them when they converted me full time or onto a permanent role, decided this is probably the best time to pursue Rapty and move back. I’d already been moonlighting Rapty when I was there, then decided, okay. If I stay there, I’m not gonna come back to India again, so I’m gonna move back. So that’s about me. I grew up in a a very different household, at least, when it comes to India, where my mom was the breadwinner in the family, and my dad was dad did his PhD, and he was always studying. And my mom always made more money than my dad, and I think that kind of shaped who I am and what I am today. Yeah.

[00:01:30 – 00:01:57] Nitin Bajaj

That is amazing. Unconventional, at least for me, is the way to go. And also to make that decision as you get something that’s more permanent, that itch, that, entrepreneurial spirit, drove you back to India. So that’s really amazing. I’d love to learn more on about RAPTEE, not just what the mission and vision is, but also, more importantly, why did you start it, and what were the seeds for that?

[00:01:58 – 00:03:39] Dinesh Arjun

Awesome. So I think see, again, I’d I’d, like you said, been entrepreneurial throughout my life. I started to HSE in my undergrad. Again, very specific in auto automotive. Again, to add to what I just said, so both my mom and dad, are automobile engineers. My mom, in fact, was I think if I’m not wrong, the first automobile engineer from so that was that’s been in the house. That’s my passion. And when we were at least in 2018, when we conceptually started, when we were looking at the electric vehicle market in India, we felt that there was so much potential, but the market just had products that customers didn’t want to really buy, and we wanted to understand why was the market in a position where people don’t even wanna adopt electric scooters or electric two wheelers, though it made absolute sense. And we essentially wanted to find a problem. Today, Rafty’s vision is to bring sustainable mobility to the masses of India. Again, the reason that I say that is today, obviously, there’s so much work happening across the world for electrification of cars and even scooters. In fact, if you look at Southeast Asia and China, there are a lot of products in the electric scooter space, but motorcycles are very endemic to India. Right? In fact, if you look at motorcycle manufacturers across the world, the top three are actually Indian man manufacturers. They are heroes and ATVs and bajas. We realized that’s a space that, needs innovation to come out of India, and, also, that means that the competition is also gonna be limited to Indian from the Indian Subcontinent, so it’s gonna make our lives any bit easier. And, hence, we went into that. And I think we’re doing some great research and, hopefully, they’ll work motorcycles next month. We’re very close to delivery. Yeah?

[00:03:39 – 00:04:15] Nitin Bajaj

That is amazing. And none of this is easy. So when you say making things a teeny bit easier, this is probably one of the most difficult sectors and industries to break through into, and especially as someone who’s you’ve been there, you’ve done, a couple of initiatives, but every single one has to go through its entire life cycle. So I really appreciate the persistence, the patience in keeping that mission and keeping that vision alive, not just for you, but your entire team. So kudos to you on that.

[00:04:16 – 00:04:17] Dinesh Arjun

Thank you. Yeah.

[00:04:18 – 00:04:27] Nitin Bajaj

And as you talk about a lot of these milestones, I’d love to understand what’s the one big challenge you would like to call out?

[00:04:29 – 00:05:42] Dinesh Arjun

I think for us as we’re engineers at heart, rather we are engineers in any which way. I all four cofounders yeah. We’re we’re four of us. We’re all engineers. And if you look at our team, at least still, like, a year ago, it I I wouldn’t call it a coincidence, but it was just easy for us to relate with fellow engineers and the company in respect to what role it was. Even HRs had an engineer background in our company. So that’s the kind of company we were because we started out as an r and d company, and then we slowly became an OEM. So getting things to work and getting things to work really well is the easiest thing for us as engineers. But especially in the automobile world, that’s not the only thing that sells. Brand value and and and brand recall is is extremely important. So for us, I think moving forward, the biggest challenge today and and going forward is gonna be creating that brand. And especially now that we’re we’re trying to build out an aspirational product in a premium segment, that’s good. That’s a huge challenge. We’re we’re in some ways already scrambling to get the right strategy out there. Now we’ve got some industry veterans who come on board and helping us out, but I don’t think there’s a a clear formula to build out a brand. And that’s, yeah, that’s the thing that keeps me awake at night.

[00:05:44 – 00:06:01] Nitin Bajaj

Give us a sense of I know you’re almost there in terms of getting things out. We just so we have a perspective of the size and scale of the operations today, the team, what geographies are you planning to start with and and things of that nature.

[00:06:02 – 00:07:42] Dinesh Arjun

Awesome. What about a 40 member team today? Large portion of that is still the Arjun d team. We’ve got 95 people, while a 40 is is r and the manufacturing and sourcing team is slowly growing but steadily growing. Obviously, the branding and marketing team is also growing, but there’s still less than half of the r and d team size. So we’re still very much a tech company at heart trying to mature out into a full full node OEM. We’ve just set up, our first pilot factory. This has a production capacity of, what, 8,000 units a year. Today, we can push about, sixth of that. But yeah. So we we make our battery packs in house. We and we’re again, because of the tech that we’ve been building over the last five years, we’re one of the we’re I’d say, fortunately or unfortunately, we have the most vertically integrated OEMs. We almost make every single component or rather we have IP across every single component that makes an electric vehicle in house. Wow. That’s a boon and a win, obviously, that helps building a moat, but then being a small company in a place filled with dinosaurs, we have already too much get to get through, and getting more and more vertical integration has its own problems. But today, that’s also become our more. But, yeah, we’re hoping to start with Chennai and Bangalore in the first quarter of sales, which will be starting at March. But the goal is to go pioneer. So our first few outlets will be about, will be company owned, company operated, then we go the dealership route. But we’re looking at putting roughly about 8,000 units in the first, on the road in the first twelve months of sales. So that’s again, we already have a little more than that in terms of booking. So we’re sorted in terms of bookings. We wanna go slow. We wanna see we wanna ensure that the vehicles that we deliver don’t feel on the road. Yeah.

[00:07:43 – 00:07:43] Nitin Bajaj

Very cool.

[00:07:43 – 00:07:44] Dinesh Arjun

I thought everything would get

[00:07:45 – 00:08:04] Nitin Bajaj

Super fascinating. I’m super stoked and excited. Now in terms of we talked about challenges and things around that. What excites me is the future and the opportunities that lie ahead of you. I’d love for you to share the one that’s most exciting for you.

[00:08:04 – 00:09:36] Dinesh Arjun

So, again, so we’re our our current mode is on the powertrain, and the architecture that we’ve built out, for two wheelers, were arguably the the first ones building something like this for the two wheeler segment in the world. But then I believe that that’s just our step into the first step into the market that’ll help us create our brand out, create, a market out for us. But I feel like and I really hope that the cost the competition also follows through with our tech and adopts our tech either with us or on their own in the future because that we believe that which is the high voltage, technology that we’re developing, I think, is truly what’s gonna revolutionize electric motorcycles and make more people adopt EVs. But today, we’re actually building in a lot of compute power into our motorcycles. And I think that has so much potential, and that’s what obviously, we we the possibilities are endless. We have so many things that we’re looking at, but only time will tell which kind of comes out and if there are new kind of opportunities using data. And I’m not just talking about taking automotive data and selling it to an insurance company, but rather how can I use that data for the development or rather improvement of the motorcycles that are already on the field, not even the new vehicles that I’m gonna put out? So we’re building a lot of compute power onto the edge itself so that the vehicle can use that data and process that data at the edge and make some use out of it, what that use is gonna be is still not well defined. And I’m really excited to what we make out of it.

[00:09:37 – 00:10:20] Nitin Bajaj

It’s always fascinating when you can a lot of people enjoy living at the edge, but I think what’s even better is being able to define that edge, and you’re doing that in pretty much a lot of the respects. So, again, super excited, and kudos for what you guys have already accomplished at this stage. Now I appreciate it. Look into the future, I’d love to pause and reflect and, have you share two moments from your personal or your professional, life at this point. One where things did not work out as you had expected. There was failure lessons, but another one where things exceeded your expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

[00:10:22 – 00:12:02] Dinesh Arjun

Great. I’ll answer your second question first, maybe. I think a lot of what I’m talking about today and what you can see, which has come out over the last five years, I think, you cannot take credit for most of it. And but I think one good thing or third, I think my biggest success story is putting an amazing team together, and I think that’s that’s helped me get this far and do so much at that. Right? We’re we’re also we’re proud to say that we’re probably the most capital efficient EV OEM startup in India at least. We’ve reached your certification and and possibly deliveries in a few days at a fraction of the cost as some of our peers. I think, while being a lot more vertically integrated and being a lot more innovative. Right? So we’re we’re trying to bring out new architecture entirely and and put that on the road. So all of that goes to the team. Even last night, we had an emergency of sorts where we had to send a piece of equipment with some new data to Pune for the testing centers. And guys worked till 1AM, got on a flight at 3AM, packed everything on their bags, and then flew out at 3AM, reached, 6AM today morning, and then got it sorted. So the turnaround was, like, yeah, literally twelve hours, and they work the entire night. Right? And I think that commitment is something that we know what we’re not asking people to do it. I don’t think it’ll be fair of us to ask for it either, but that’s it. We’ve got a team who’s really passionate about the project as much as the founders are and really wanna it doesn’t matter what time it is or what is required. They ensure they get in get it right, and they they Dinesh the job. That’s absolutely

[00:12:02 – 00:12:19] Nitin Bajaj

fascinating. And kudos again to you and the rest of the leadership team for building that culture. Because as you said, this you can’t push this on anyone. It has to come to them, and that passion reflects what the the team believes in. So it’s amazing.

[00:12:20 – 00:13:31] Dinesh Arjun

I think if I were to call call a success today, I think that’s the the only thing that I I’d say the the the top thing there. In terms of, on the other side, failures, I think, like I said, I think we’re why though we’ve been one of the most capital efficient companies, we’ve I think by sheer nature of just size of this project that we’re taking up, obviously, for us. For me, as a method, but my previous two ventures were nowhere close to what the scale of this is. Right? And I think though we’ve been very cautious about where we spend, I think financial strategy wise at this scale, I think we’ve still done quite a few mistakes. We’ve gone close to bankruptcy almost at least four times now and obviously come out of it and do it again. But, hopefully, we don’t make the same mistakes again. But it, I think it is difficult to have that level of financial discipline when you’re trying to do things at the scale, especially when you don’t have, the experience to handle as much capital as what we’re looking where we’ve raised and we’re we’re working with. But I think that’s probably something that I’m struggling with, and I I’m I’m learning over a period of time. But but, yeah, I think that’s been one of my biggest repeated figures, if I may.

[00:13:32 – 00:13:57] Nitin Bajaj

Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that openly. As you rightly said, if you’ve not been there and sometimes mentors can help you, others that have been there before you can help. But when you’re defining the edge, you don’t even know, what to expect. And also doing that when you’re doing all kinds of vertical integration, that’s a tough call. But, again, thanks for the transparency.

[00:13:58 – 00:13:59] Dinesh Arjun

Of course. Of course.

[00:14:00 – 00:14:14] Nitin Bajaj

After something lighter, obviously, there’s a lot of stress with what you’re building. There’s long days, long nights. What do you do to step back, relax, take the the steam off, if you will?

[00:14:17 – 00:15:56] Dinesh Arjun

This is interesting. Right? I think interestingly, right, this is again, the four of us, the cofounders, again, I knew Kirti, pretty well, but the other two guys, I did know of them, but it was sheer luck that, you know, we got an amazing team of us to get again touch. So I really hope nothing goes wrong in the future. But cool thing about the thing that keeps us together is that I think the biggest passion for each of us, the hobby itself is the work that we’re doing. I think earlier, I think when we were when we were less than a 20 member team, we used to work seven days a week because we thought, okay. What am I gonna do when I go home? I’m I’m still gonna work on the project or so the same thing. Right? So might as well come to office because this was our hobby. We really enjoyed, and we I think we still enjoy doing what we do. Obviously, now we have broader responsibilities, and we have to get work done, which is probably not as fun as getting our hands dirty. But, but, yeah, I think interestingly, for me, again, I don’t know if it’s a bad good thing or a bad thing, but the only OVF that I have is doing, thing the work. And I think it’s same for all all all four of us. So we really enjoy being at work. For example, Kartik enjoys creating Kartik’s our CTO. He he enjoys trying to figure out what’s the next thing that we can do and bring to our motorcycle. Keith is always innovating in terms of manufacturing processes and wants to come on Sundays and just when nobody’s Arjun, get yeah. At least do some of the things that his team usually does himself so that he still feels that he’s still in in in control and he is getting his hands dirty. Yeah. I think that’s what we do. I’d really love to have some hobbies, but try to get my tummy smaller at least, but that’s not happening any different.

[00:15:58 – 00:16:05] Nitin Bajaj

The time will come for that too. Yeah. Any book or podcast that is a favorite that you would like to recommend?

[00:16:07 – 00:16:58] Dinesh Arjun

I’ve tried reading books, but I’ve never really been able to finish anything %. But, podcasts have usually been the same. However, I think the recently specific ones with the Nikhil Ahmad podcast is, I think, been genuine. He I think the entire series has been fairly genuine. I think it’s it doesn’t feel scripted, and I think I’m able to relate to people in in a broader sense where I think we’re able to see people for who they really are even there. For example, there’s a an episode with mister Kumar Birla, and you you generally think of them as having a different set of problems than what you generally do. And then when you talk and you and you see them talk and then you realize, okay. They’re also human and they’re also they also have the same problem that you do, then it sets a lot of things into perspective.

[00:16:59 – 00:17:08] Nitin Bajaj

So true. And it’s a good one. It’s a very personal, non edited fireside chat of people just talking about life.

[00:17:08 – 00:17:16] Dinesh Arjun

I hope so. I hope it’s not edited. Obviously, I wouldn’t know, but it definitely feels genuine. So I think that’s one of the podcasts that I’m generally following now. Yeah.

[00:17:16 – 00:17:24] Nitin Bajaj

It’s amazing. Now onto my favorite part of the show, we call it the one line life lessons. Would love for you to share your life lessons with us.

[00:17:26 – 00:20:27] Dinesh Arjun

Awesome. Maybe starting off with the this the thing that I just mentioned. Right? I think when you look at role models, you always think, yes. Think about people who are very not disconnected from reality, but so everyone is human. No person is too big or too no person too unnatremovable, I think. And when you really realize that, you I think you have a lot more control over your life because when you think, okay. This is mister Ratan Tata. He is so and today, he’s also human. He has problems that are reasonable to you. Then I think that way to realize, and that’s also one of the reason that I like that podcast very much. I think second, I think the next thing that I’d say is actually connected to this. I think that every mystery has the simplest of explanations. Mhmm. I I love what I mean by this is I I love conspiracy theories, but at the end of the day, I know that they are conspiracy theories. I think there are the simplest explanations for everything. There is as much as I would love for to believe that Illuminati exists, I think the simple explanation is just there’s somebody else doing business and and there’s something. Right? So I think every mystery has the simplest explanation that you can think of. Nothing is too complicated. What I’ve, learned at work is that, again, going back to culture, is that who you choose to have around you defines you. I think that’s very important. It’s not just your friend network, but also just your professional network. I think I think choosing the right people really can compound the work that you do. You’re being you you do work x and then you have the right people, that x amount of work becomes 10 x automatically. Mhmm. And and that also means compounding actually works in a start up. Right? I think whenever I think, okay, we’re too late to take that step now to achieve this, you end up six months later thinking, we’re still here. If I had taken that decision or six months ago, I would have, by now, maybe completed a new project and and gone forward. So I think I think it’s never too late from from not from a larger point of view, but even at work to do the first thing for your next project. Doesn’t matter what position you are in, what financial state you whether you’re responding or not. Because I usually end up pushing out new experiments and innovations when there’s when finances type, but I think I realized that if I had just started, even in the smallest capacity, even if I was not able to put in effort, money into that process, it would have reached some state by now, possibly completion. And I think the last point maybe to to leave you off is, I think one thing that we taking we’re taking very seriously at Rafty is that pace of innovation is everything. I think we as engine I think that’s more because we as engineers want to keep innovating, and I don’t think I think how fast we innovate doesn’t matter how we fail. I think it’s refining who we are. Not sure if that sounds too classical, but this is something that I’ve been wanting to write in big bold letters in the office, but I should probably do that tomorrow.

[00:20:28 – 00:20:57] Nitin Bajaj

There we go. Take that action. Right? Yeah. So, Dinesh, thank you so much for taking the time to share your journey, your story, and your life lessons. Really appreciate it. Again, super excited about the journey you’re on along with your team, and, many kudos. And, congratulations for the big milestone that’s coming up here pretty soon. And looking forward to getting you back on and talking about more lessons and more success stories.

[00:20:59 – 00:21:13] Dinesh Arjun

Thank you so much for having me, Nitin. This has been a long deal, but I’m really happy that we got to do this. Really appreciate your your time and and being so supportive and being always this cheerful. I think we need more people like you to give people like us a little bit more energy now and then. So yeah. Appreciate it.