Ki Mobility test drives an O2O model for EVs, conventional automobiles

As electric scooters and cars gear up to hit Indian roads in a big way, a Chennai-based TVS group company is busy parking itself in the e-aftermarket services business. Ki Mobility Solutions has moved swiftly, tying up with as many as eight electric vehicle (EV) original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) — including with six-year-old Gurugram-based e-scooter-maker Okinawa and Coimbatore-headquartered e-moped maker Boom Motors.

Ki Mobility was created by TVS Automobile Solutions (TVS ASL), India’s largest player in the automotive aftermarket segment, in November 2020. It claims to be India’s first full-stack O2O (online-to-offline) digital platform that operates the myTVS parts and accessories brand. The original idea was to give TVS’s three million customer base a digital platform and expand it to 10 million by 2025.

But Ki Mobility goes beyond that, offering access to its 2,500 garages, space to set up charging stations, diagnostics, 24x7 roadside assistance, insurance and ensuring the availability of spare parts. The name Ki is derived from a Japanese word meaning atmosphere. TVS ASL chose the name to symbolise its strategy to dominate the aftermarket environment, an official source explained.  

Including EVs and traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) automobiles, the company is targeting a larger share of the $10-billion automotive aftermarket by acting as an aggregator. This space is largely unorganised through the presence of about 500,000 garages.

In August this year, Italy’s Agnelli family’s holding company Exor-backed fund made its mark by investing Rs 375 crore in Ki Mobility. The investment is unique in that Exor-invested companies include global majors like Ferrari, PartnerRe, CNH Industrial, and, not least, the Economist Group and Juventus Football Club.

Money from the Exor fund was invested in establishing a pan-India platform and in building its cloud-based digital infrastructure to become the largest business-to-consumer (B2C) player in the automotive aftermarket.

Before this, in June, Pratithi Investment Trust (represented by its trustee and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan) and Mumbai-based private equity fund SeaLink Capital Partners (SCP) had invested Rs 85 crore.

On the road to becoming digital through Ki Mobility, TVS ASL acquired three start-ups in 2016 — Jazzmyride.com (an online accessory parts sales), autoSense (analytics-based customer relationship management solution provider), and Redsun (an Internet of Things start-up) for Rs 75 crore. In 2020, it acquired Mahindra First Choice, a used-car business, and in 2021 GoBumpr, an automotive services mobile app. Mahindra had a pan-India network of 475-plus franchise partners and 100-plus distributors, which have already been integrated to myTVS; GoBumpr will get fully integrated by next April.

“Ki Mobility enjoys a unique advantage because there is no other player providing all the services in the EV and ICE aftermarket; the majority focus on only select parts of the value chain,” said G Srinivasa Raghavan, managing director, Ki Mobility Solutions.

“We are facing competition only in pockets — for roadside assistance, it’s one kind of competition; for service aggregation another kind; for insurance and spare parts aggregation, another set of players, and so on. But there is no one who can offer the full portfolio in India or even globally,” he added.

Industry experts point out that this unique model could be a challenge or an opportunity for the company in the coming days as there is no successful model to follow. In 2020-21, Ki Mobility earned revenues of around Rs 570 crore. “We are confident that we will be able to grow at 35-40 per cent,” Raghavan said. 

Going ahead, the company wants to ensure customer access to all service portfolios through digital platforms. This would include enhancing the digital diagnostics that it offers for 45 models to more vehicles, using artificial intelligence for lining up a service calendar based on the health of the car, providing customers access to retailers and several garages. To ensure the safety of customer data in the online space, the company has roped in Google Cloud as its technology partner. Partners such as Exor and Pratithi provide valuable technology inputs, too.

Beyond the domestic arena, Ki Mobility is eyeing the global market with digital aftermarket technology. “We are actively exploring the European market. We already have a small presence in the premium segment through Scuderia,” Raghavan said. Scuderia Car Parts is an OEM parts distributor that also specialises in performance tuning products for high-end cars. This will open the doors to a $240-billion European aftermarket, too. With the market shifting to EVs gradually, the Ki Mobility model offers new players access to a supply chain and dealership network.

Though it is early days to judge the success of this unique business model, at least one customer appreciates the strategy. “The partnership with Ki Mobility for us is ‘Peace of Mind’— knowing that our customers will be taken care of no matter where they are; that they will get a fast turnaround and good service; and that they will not have any difficulty contacting us,” said Anirudh Ravi Narayanan, chief executive officer of Boom Motors. He added, “That we will be able to offer this service to customers from day one as an EV start-up is an incredible value proposition.”