Introduction
The battery is the single most expensive part of an electric scooter, and the biggest source of buyer anxiety: "What if it dies after four years? How much will a new one cost?" Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) addresses both. The buyer pays a lower upfront price for the scooter and a usage-based fee for the battery, typically per kilometre, through a financing partner. Ather Energy has offered BaaS-style plans on the Rizta and 450 alongside outright purchase.
The question: should Ather actively push BaaS plans for Rizta buyers, or keep promoting outright purchase as the default? This is a trade-off between lower upfront price (which grows volume) and simpler, higher-certainty economics and customer experience. I'll clarify, classify the trade-off, map the product, form a hypothesis, choose metrics, design an experiment and give a decision framework.
Treat this as a pricing and ownership-model trade-off with a test-and-learn mindset: define what we would need to see to switch the default, then design the experiment that shows it.
Step 1
Clarifying Questions (3 minutes)
- Assumption: Upfront price is around ₹30,000–40,000 lower; the per-km fee is around ₹1 with a minimum monthly commitment, financed by partner lenders.
- Assumption: A financing partner owns the battery asset; Ather earns on the scooter and shares in the financing economics.
- Assumption: About 12%, higher in tier-2 cities.
- Assumption: Yes, odometer data is sent via connectivity, and billing integrates with lenders.
- Assumption: Yes, decided before the festive season.
State your assumptions about plan economics clearly. Interviewers do not expect exact figures, but they do expect you to compute a rough total cost of ownership and notice who wins and loses under each plan.
Practice similar questions
Subscribe to access the full answer
.png){kind=logo}
