In April this year, Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath acquired a significant amount of shares of Ather Energy from Flipkart’s co-founder Sachin Bansal, an existing investor in the company.
In a social media post Kamath shared recently about the importance on buying local and promoting homegrown brands.
“Patriotism is a different thing to different people, mine today seems to be to dream of young Indian products and entrepreneurs killing it inside and outside India,” he said.
Kamath added, “Enough of the foreign franchise is better, clothes, jewellery, food, auto, content, shoes, and just about everything else.”
#Patriotism is a different thing to different people, mine today seems to be to dream of young Indian products and entrepreneurs killing it inside and outside India. Enough of the foreign franchise is better, clothes, jewellery, food, auto, content, shoes, and just about… pic.twitter.com/trYDpJnujj
— Nikhil Kamath (@nikhilkamathcio) July 8, 2024
Talking about why he decided to make an investment in Ather, Kamath shared, “Will pick great products with terrible marketing every time, sales I hope can be solved for easier than product. The reason we made this investment is also this, every ancillary player in this space said #Ather, the product is the best, but they don’t know how to sell, conservative, measured, etc.”
“Let us Indians buy more Indian brands, until one day non-Indians buy Indian brands. Every one of us has pluses and minuses, Ather has sh*t marketing but great product,” he said.
Kamath also shared that he bought an Ather scooter last year at MRP, with no discount because “Tarun (Mehta, CEO of Ather Energy) didn’t even give me a discount”.
Speaking about why he chose Ather, Kamath said that his journey with Ather Energy began when he started being bullish on the EV sector sometime last year and found interesting insights. He shared that the Indian EV market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.4 percent to $117.78 billion by 2032.
He shared, “1 in every 2 EVs sold in India is a two wheeler. Additionally, India stands second to China in the sales of electric two wheelers globally. There are 1319 EV startups registered in India.”
He also spoke about the government’s plan to make 30 percent of all new vehicles sold in India electric and how in 2023, EV sales in India have witnessed 47 percent growth.
Ather responded to Kamath’s musings, where the company’s CEO Tarun Mehta shared Kamath’s post on his Instagram story with the tagline, “Marketing team be like “isko discount hi de dena chahiye tha.”
