The company has hired industry
veterans like Dr. Venkatesh Padmanabhan as the Chief Operating Officer. He will
head sourcing, vendor development, quality, manufacturing, and procurement at
Ather. Venki, as everyone fondly calls him, comes with a long career across
multiple automotive companies including General Motors, Daimler Group’s
Chrysler, and Royal Enfield where he joined as COO and eventually became the
CEO in 2011.
Thiruppathy Srinivasan (Thiru)
has joined the company as VP, Vehicle Development. Thiru has over 25+ years of
experience in product organisations like 3M, Rexnord, Tyco, and A.O. Smith. He
holds a Master's degree from the Ohio State University and a Bachelor's degree
from IIT Madras
Further, the company noted
that sales of electric vehicles rose 37.5% to 22,000 units in fiscal 2016,
still a mere 0.1% of total vehicles sold during the same period in India. However,
with the latest policy announcements, the Government of India (GoI) seems to
have made its intent clear with an ambitious target of running only electric
vehicles in India by 2030.
As testing continues on the
hardware front, the Ather team developed a light Monte Carlo tool for internal
use in data simulations.