TLDR version: we need to work a lot more on the product but the tech is getting better. Trip planner is there because we are already planning it out.
Long version (read only if you are interested in the inner workings at Ather and don’t take this as a defence of anything): I think we are quite some distance away from having product market fit for the SW suite as a whole. Quality’s actually come a long way in the last 6 months but the actual fit of features for owners needs a lot more work. We are quite aware of it.
We have struggled with a fairly anaemic team in the past, partly a mistake of:
- us poorly estimating how much work a stable release will take (esp when the team is operating with constraints on HW, tech restrictions from partners)
- us pausing/slowing hiring down during most of 2020 and it hitting the team hard because that was the EXACT moment when they needed to ramp-up massively
This, along with the fact that we started charging for Ather Connect, at the same time, has made some issues worse than they should have been. This should have been only a product mgmt issue but became a tech issue.
Writing this because you asked if I am happy with the ‘teams’. We have a LOT of work to do with the product and a fair bit on stabilizing the platforms. We have some distance to go in ramping up the teams and allowing them the bandwidth to properly focus. But, honestly, I am quite proud of what the actual folks have been able to deliver despite a lot of challenges.
Every single engg team at Ather went through this phase. There was a time when the power electronics seemed like a villian when the mechanicals seemed ready and HW had come later, because the teams were formed later. Later, the embedded teams faced the same struggles, then the transmission, then the bodyworks so on and on. Every single time, as a team gets formed and as a company we start learning that what kind of a talent, caliber and #s we need there’s some learning curve. Luckily, most teams went through that phase before the product was actually launched. I think at some level, given our own backgrounds we were more focused on the HW all these years. While connectivity based ecosystem was something we were excited about, we ended up giving it limited actual attention and most work was focused toward ensuring that it somehow ‘worked’ at a proto scale of 500-1000 customers total.
Unfortunately, the web tech teams are going through this growing up journey at Ather at a time when we already have thousands of customers across 20 cities and are growing super fast. It might seem funny but until early this year we did not even allocate a full time product manager for the SW features (kill me now) because we thought that it all somehow worked during the days of 450 and so should be fine.
We have come a long way in the last 6 months. Quality has swung a few times but is much much better now, there’s a better understanding of how the owners are, a better roadmap is starting to emerge, the stack is looking better and better to scale to scales of a few lakh now and the teams are able to breathe.
On the specific topic of Trip Planner - Ather Labs started with a standard statement (we will launch it, if there’s interest) because it’s intended to be the DNA of Labs. Trip Planner otherwise has a fair bit of traction already and there’s work already happening.
Cheers! Tarun
Cause both serve their own purpose TBH. I barely touch my ICE 2W since riding Ather is much more fun! And I never go on any 2W more than 80km.
). Like the team takes into account the average fuel rates, it can take into consideration average electricity rates. This is more on the lines of my previous idea of personalised calculations by entering the amounts but less complex in nature. I don’t think it will be difficult to implement and could be a more realistic indicator of how much one has saved with the Ather.
