"Emobi's core focus remains steadfastly on the B2B market, endeavoring to transform products into services that align with our partners' needs. Our goal is not just to provide services but to make them cleaner, more reliable, and equally performative, catering to the high standards our B2B clientele expect."
In this episode of The Shape Of Work podcast, we promise you an enlightening conversation with Bharath Rao, the Co-founder and CEO of Emobi, who's leading the charge in this dynamic and burgeoning industry. Bharath shares his unique career voyage that has led him to the intersection of renewable energy and electric mobility, where he's confronting the challenges of competing with global powerhouses like China. Get a sneak peek into the innovative products and services Emobi is offering to their B2B customers, designed to transform and help us adapt to a more sustainable future.
In this episode, Bharath joins us in a thought-provoking discussion on Emobi and its groundbreaking impact on the realm of emotional intelligence. Learn about the revolutionary work Emobi is pioneering, the opportunities that arise from integrating emotional intelligence into our routines, and the challenges we might face along the way.
Episode highlights
How does Emobi stand out in the current electric vehicle industry?
How is the future of renewable energy, energy storage, and the electric vehicle industry evolving with time?
Will renewable energy become the primary source of generation, necessitating greater energy storage due to its intermittent nature?
Advice for entrepreneurs interested in renewable energy sectors
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation building tools and products to simplify recruitment, onboarding, employee engagement, and retention. The product stack from Springworks includes: SpringVerify— B2B verification platform EngageWith— employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun, and interactive games platforms for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system.
Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture, leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.
Speaker 1:
Hello and welcome to the Shape of Work, a podcast series by Springworks. My name is Anoop and I am your host. Each week, we'll be talking to top people managers across the world on the future of work and how it's shaping our workplace. So sit back and get ready to find out more from these movers and shakers, as we have a no-holes barred. Anything goes. Conversation with them about their journey, their insights, their thoughts, most importantly, their ideas and vision for the workplace of the future. Join in on the conversation, leave a comment and don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
Speaker 2:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Shape of Work podcast, and for today's episode, we have with us Mr Bharath Rao, who is the co-founder and CEO of Imobi. Hello, bharath, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3:
Thank you, arjit, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:
So to begin with, could you please take us through your career journey so far?
Speaker 3:
Thank you, arjit. So I've had the privilege of spending most of my working career in renewable, primarily starting with renewable energy generation side of projects, and I've actively invested as well as built and solar generating projects during the good old days when speed and tariff were attractive for investments into the sector. And once the government did realize that generating energy from renewables is very feasible as well as commercially viable, the government removed feed-in tariffs and moved towards reverse bidding, where we now see tariffs being quoted significantly lesser than thermal power. That led to me rethinking about as a 27-year-old rethinking about what I should be doing for the rest of my life, and I figured, if renewables are just about now becoming mainstream in energy generation, energy storage and energy consumption of the renewable energy will play a significant role in the way forward. And that's how EmoB started for us in terms of building consumption of energy storage as well as consuming energy generated from renewables in a sustainable manner.
Speaker 2:
Awesome and I must say, as much as I've read about EmoB, I must say it's very sort of like a very futuristic sort of an organization because, considering that renewable sources of energy is coming into the picture, so it's really like I'm sure it took you like a futuristic vision to be able to start something like that.
Speaker 3:
Yes, arjun, thank you. Primarily, my background, again from the renewable generation side, which India still needs about 5-7% growth in energy year on year from its base load just for its electricity requirements. And if we start transitioning to electric vehicles and all of us start buying by electric vehicles tomorrow, we do not have enough electricity on the grid to charge it and grid power is the majority of it comes from coal and that is not the cleanest source of power. And that's where we look at EmoB and electric mobility as not just a way of consumption but a way of integrating renewable energy generation to storage, to consumption. And that's sort of the philosophy that we follow at EmoB and looking at various vehicle platforms to be able to capture and maximize renewable energy generation, while we also deploy electric vehicles for consumption of energy.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. So, for a world like these, a few of the challenges that probably led to the foundation of EmoB and these challenges that we also want to know.
Speaker 3:
So I guess the biggest country or company slash country globally is China, and China, over a period of last 10 to 15 years, has built core competencies and capabilities which pretty significantly, are ahead of most of the other economies in the electric mobility and energy storage space, and that makes it very easy to be dependent on the Chinese ecosystem rather than really innovating and starting a development ground up, and that was one of the key challenges which we faced in a five-year-old startup. I think we do get asked quite often why you still not revenue generating. We are not, because we are trying to build all the components core components ground up and capabilities in-house to be able to not only stay on pace with Chinese counterparties, but also to be able to better build better products for a better future.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. So what are some of the cutting edge products and services that Emovie offers in the electric vehicle industry and how do you differentiate them from the existing solutions?
Speaker 3:
Right. So, as Emovie, we took a conscious view of saying let us first look at those segments which do have the highest emissions associated with it and highest usage, and that, primarily, is always going to be a B2B segment. Where the vehicle is a way of earning wages or earning livelihood, is where the vehicles get used significantly more than where the vehicle is being used purely for commute. And that's where our focus as Emovie has been to primarily go after B2B operations and products suited for B2B market, giving them an experience similar to the B2C kind of products that they use for B2B applications, but making it better by one, making it cleaner and two, also making it more reliable without compromising on performance that they're used to on their highest person vehicle. And I think that's a very strong foundation of what we believe in, which is to go after the B2B customers and convert the product into a service as vehicle, as a service with partners that we work with, or even the battery as a service with the partners that we are working with.
Speaker 2:
Okay. So now I would love to know that how do you see the future of renewable energy, energy storage in electric vehicle industries evolving with time, and what role does Emovie play in the future landscape?
Speaker 3:
If you look at renewable energy as a whole, I think it's very evident now that that is going to be the primary source of energy generation and incremental energy generation across the world, one driven by economics and second driven by, also, the current state of affairs with our emissions globally, and these drivers are something which are only helping further active rates renewable on the generation side.
Speaker 3:
However, purely because of the intermittent nature of renewable energy, storage becomes a very key part to replace something like a thermal power plant where you can run it at 90, 100% operating efficiency, versus wind or solar plant, which would typically be between 16 to 20% operating efficiency. That differential will one require four times as many renewables, and each X of renewables will require four X of energy storage. And these two pieces would be the first pieces for us to solve, whereby then, the grid is going to have a lot more of renewable energy for use in electric vehicles. So we think all three of them are interlinked and they're not independent problems that have to be solved in silos, but sort of co-dependent problems that it should ideally be a mandate that every EV manufacturer should also be generating renewable energy to make sure that they're sort of working towards the next future.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, definitely. So if you have to describe EMobi's vision, I mean, where do you want to see EMobi evolving in like next five years? How would you describe that?
Speaker 3:
We see EMobi purely as an enabler of a vibrant community-based ecosystem promoting decentralized renewable energy generation, storage and consumption within communities, where the communities would build products and use those products as services within themselves. And I think that's the future that we're trying to build towards, because not everything should be also grid connected. There are places, for example Africa, which does not have large tracks of Africa. Large number of countries in Africa do not have grids like we do in India or in more developed countries, but it doesn't mean that they should now invest in building grid-connected renewables and then build a grid. They can easily just skip all of that and build community-based distributed renewable energy generation, storage and consumption, which I believe would be a lot more efficient spend of capital than really investing in a large-scale grid. So there is going to be a future which will be sort of going back to the olden days when I think Edison figured out that DC power and localized mini grids were probably an ideal way of generating and consuming power in a community.
Speaker 2:
Awesome way to go for a movie. So, since you're an entrepreneur of an organization which is currently so, which is so relevant in today's time, so I would love to keep to take some piece of advice from you, like what advice do you have for individuals or entrepreneurs who are interested in making, like, a positive impact in their renewable energy factors?
Speaker 3:
I guess we should always start from the first principles and look at building core competencies and capabilities first, after identifying a clear pain point, and it's more about, I think, sticking with what you're doing. It's not an easy journey to invest time and effort, and that's where perhaps people like yourself, who promote the startup ecosystem and interconnecting founders and core networking with probably other companies in similar space and, to that extent, not having to reinvent the wheel but working with the right ecosystem partners, would also be another way for individuals and entrepreneurs to build careers. But I encourage every young boy, girl, woman, man to look at clean energy and new energy technologies, because I firmly believe this is the transition which will take at least 50 to 100 years to play out, and the opportunities that we would be seeing coming in the sector is just still very, very early at this stage.
Speaker 2:
Yes, definitely so. Thank you so much, bharat, for taking time out of your schedule and coming over on this podcast and sharing your amazing point of views and discussing you mobile with us.
Speaker 3:
It's my pleasure, Ratshita. Thank you again for having me on this podcast. It's been a pleasure to have a conversation with you.
Speaker 2:
Likewise, and thanks to listeners for tuning into this episode.