Working towards their mission to move India toward sustainability with a zero-carbon footprint, Hala Mobility was founded under the leadership of Srikanth Reddy, in 2020.
Started their journey with 4 vehicles and currently offering over 2000+ vehicles with more than 15,000 happy riders, Hala Mobility has scaled up its operations rapidly in recent years.
Discussing the recent surge of electric mobility in India’s automotive landscape, Aishwarya had a candid chat with Srikanth Reddy, Founder and CEO of Hala Mobility. Below are the edited excerpts.
Delivering a wide portfolio of electric mobility solutions, mention Hala Mobility solution’s USP that makes them stand out in the EV crowd?
Today, blue-collar and gig workers are not able to get immediate access to vehicles as they don’t have the capacity to spend. Leaning on this need, we created a platform for EV two-wheeler rentals, leasing and easy financing elements on the platform.
While facilitating an easy KYC and on-boarding process, we also have other features like quick on- road assistance and maintenance and insurance. These have enabled our customers to have an end-to-end solution all at one place. On the business side we are even assisting with more detailed analytics, helping businesses optimize their last mile delivery process.
How is Hala leveraging its platform to resolve last-mile connectivity problems prevalent in India?
The moment you want to go to a certain place, you need different conveyances according to the distance covered, right? Like you take an auto to go to the metro station and then take a metro and then another bike, auto or taxi to reach your final destination.
If you look at the journey of Hala Mobility, we started as a last-mile delivery company, where people can pick up the vehicle and drop the vehicle anywhere. But as we understood the market needs better and the different layers of EV’s business models like- infrastructure, usage patterns, consumer behavior and so on, we transformed into a rental and leasing platform for EV’s. We customized weekly, fortnightly, and monthly rentals/leasing and easy financing solutions for our customers.
This has not only helped us in penetrating further into the market but also has helped us with sustainable growth. Our aim is to elevate the penetration rate of EV’s and create a more accessible platform for EV’s for the Indian market and help our customers move towards a sustainable future, but in an economical approach.
The word “Sustainability” has become the key mantra defining every new business model, what are your thoughts on this subject?
Sustainability has become a mantra, as people mature, they realize that it’s a way of living. Starting from the clothes we use, things we do and everything around us, we are all moving towards sustainable alternatives.
Take for example, early morning when we go for a jog, we are already suffocating. Whether, its Delhi, Mumbai or even Hyderabad now, we are peaking towards extremes of pollution.
So, if we want to have a breathable and healthy space for ourselves and generations to come, sustainability is the only way forward.
Hala Mobility partnered with Statiq last year. What’s your take on the current charging landscape in India?
We and Statiq have strategically leveraged our strengths. Starting with the advanced technology of bringing in smart chargers, this will offer customers convenient charging points near them. This will not only aim to strengthen the EV industry in a broad manner but also as specific ways as almost instant consumer wish-fulfilment by providing new charging stations in places that consumers need.
We have access to first-hand data from consumers regarding where they need new charging stations, this collaboration will result in this native insight sharing of consumers’ demands and needs so that Statiq builds plans that ultimately lead to newer charging stations in pertinent locations.
Apart from Statiq, we have also partnered with RACE Energy, Log 9 and Battery Smart. There are a lot of synergies we are already working on for the bigger product that is yet to come.
Despite the growth in the sales of 2 and 3-W EVs in India, the growth in the charging infrastructure is slow. With the government incentives and increasing ownership of 2/3W EVs many of the charging infrastructure business models, are falling in place.
Given that we are seeing EV adoption rapidly increasing and these collaborative ecosystems that we are building, we are sure we are all working towards enhancing the ecosystem even further.
Any future plans for expansion or any upcoming project the company is currently working on?
Currently, we are planning to launch our pilots in Vijayawada and Bengaluru and thereby, we have six more cities in our pipeline where we are considering scaling up our operations. Right now, our main focus is Hyderabad region, focusing on scaling up our fleet more, by the end of this financial year.
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