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Cool bike, but no thank you

Everyone is impressed by the fact that the green bike managed a podium finish in the Xtreme race, UK. Everyone wants to employ them, but venture capital isn’t coming. Companies want them to compromise and make a cheap machine

Arundhati Ranade

Posted On Friday, February 05, 2010 at 11:41:54 PM

Ketan Mhasawade, Krunal Nanavati and Kapil Shelke with their green machine Tork

Here’s an example why bright research students and innovators tend to go abroad to carry on the good work.

In July 2008, we had covered three city youths who had made a fast and eco-friendly motorcycle and had managed a podium finish in an international race for green bikes.

After that win, the three young engineers (all of them are in their early twenties) — Ketan Mhasawade, Krunal Nanavati and Kapil Shelke — had stars in their eyes and hoped to make a life by making world class fast green bikes.

Today, that dream is becoming harder to attain because the world around them does not seem to be in agreement.

To begin with, it is a great achievement that their college project did not just win a competition and die out. They kept the passion alive and turned the bike into a serious career path, after getting their mechanical engineering degree. They started their own company.

However, they are now facing a tougher challenge, which is far more difficult than making the bike was: they can’t get a financer for their project.

They have approached few venture capitalists to make their idea commercially viable, but are yet to get a deal good enough to convert their innovation into entrepreneurship.

The funny thing is many companies are willing to hire them as employees but nobody is yet to ready to look at their project independently. They had designed the bike while studying in D Y Patil Engineering College. They had invested Rs 25 lakhs and two years on their project.

According to them, it was the fastest electric bike in India. The main thing was to design a chassis that could hold batteries. This meant existing chassis could not be used. Eventually, they participated in Time Trial Xtreme Grand Prix in the UK, and finished third.

They were the only entry from India in international electric bikes category. After their success, they decided to christen their company after their the team name, Tork India.

HURDLE RACE
“Getting the paper work done to rope in sponsors is the most difficult job, tougher than making the bike,” Kapil and Ketan said, and elaborated that their “plan is to manufacture and commercially launch our bike under the brand name Tork India.

But our company is an infant. So, we can’t launch our bike just like that. We need to publicise our brand first.”

For last four months, they have been contacting venture capitalists, but have failed to bait one. “We will participate in the UK race this year too. Winning the race is necessary to build our brand before the launch. But we need sponsorship to race,” Kapil said.

After hearing Tork India’s success at the elecrtic bike race in the UK few companies did show interest in the design. “But they were offering us jobs. We want to be entrepreneurs,” the team members said.

The problem was most of the companies either wanted tonnes of plans and paper work or wanted to water down their innovation to make it low-cost, hence easy to sell in the Indian market.

The teams contention is that, it is already a great bike and needs to be the way it is now, because toning it down would kill the very seed they started out on, in the first place.

“Few companies needed a business plan. That’s a lot of paper work, and we engineers are not very good at it. But after we provided the paper work, they told us to compromise on the design and make a commercially low-cost bike, similar to existing electric bikes. We were not interested in making that kind of a design,” Kapil said.

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