We are publishing an interview of Mr. Abdul Ahad, CEO, Trone Automobile.
About the founders
There are a total of 3 founders from mechanical engineering background.
- Abdul Ahad, CEO, is a person who firmly believes in smart work over hard work. He served as the Quality & Production intern in Pearey Lall & Sons Pvt Ltd and as the technical sales intern in System Air Pvt Ltd during his academic tenure. He led the engine & transmission department of our team during SAE INDIA BAJA 2014. Automobile is something which he is deeply passionate about and thus he makes time to watch various vlogs and articles on automobiles for atleast an hour a day. He was one of the prominent members of the E-Cell and was responsible for organizing various workshops and speaker sessions. He designed the mono-wheel which is presently the prototype and won the first prize in the final year projects of our B.Tech.
- Shanu Maddheshiya, CTO, is a person who is highly energetic and creative thinker. He is a keen learner and can easily stand in any technical war ground and come up with results.Since early school days he has won various technical, soft skills and sports competition. He was the founder and the student chair-person of the E-Cell of our college. He also served as the college representative for E-Cell IIT Bombay and under his leadership the team achieved 13th National rank in National Entrepreneurship Challenge with numerous other achievements.
Shanu Maddheshiya, CTO, Trone Automobile He was also the vice-chairperson of the SAE Collegiate Club of our college. He has an experience in Diesel locomotive engines manufacturing as a part of one month academic internships along with many individual projects including a solar car and the SAE BAJA. Automobile is his childhood passion. He also won the first position in business plan competition organised during Techkriti-14 by our college.
- Vishal Ranjan Singh, COO, believes in an organised way of thinking and working and has gained industry experience during academic internship in Honda India Pvt. Ltd. where he served in the inventory management department. He has credibility of his last education startup as a co-founder which gained good traction because of his hard work. He also served as the Treasurer & Secretary of the E-Cell of our college during the 4 years of his B.Tech. He has great interest in national economics and politics and has won the 5th rank in Virtual Investor Hat during E-Summit 2016, IIT Bombay. He got placed as a graduate engineer trainee with VIVO India Pvt Ltd where he served as Material Engineer, where he resigned later due to his dedication towards the start up.
We three have been working together since the first year of our mechanical engineering and have founded technical and entrepreneurship society in our college and have started the chain of practical learning and entrepreneurial thinking over just theory learning in engineering in our college.
We participated in SAE BAJA INDIA in the first year of our engineering, which is a rare trend in our college. Later we went ahead and took up the Indo Asian Solar Challenge, organised by LPU, in the third year of our B.Tech wherein , we together built a solar powered car. In the final year we had again clubbed up as a team for our minor and major academic project.
This has strengthened our bond as team members and increased the credibility of mechanical department of our college to a great height. Together we carry experience in entrepreneurial events and have always learnt from our mistakes and have moved forward more wiser. We three possess never give-up streak in each of us.
What is the problem you are trying to solve? Can you share with us any insights that led you to believe that this is a big enough problem?
Walking sounds healthy and good only when done in morning or evening. But when during tough working hours one gets to walk with in industries or business parks it waste a lot of energy and time and that in turn appears in decreased performance in professional life. We faced this problem in our internships and in our personal life when we had to go nearby shops but walking felt too long and driving car or bike felt too much work for that much distance. This we started observing around us and interviewed many people regarding the same and felt the need of something that can substitute walking and can provide easy mobility to walk able distances. During the market research for an appropriate product, we came across a couple of options available in Indian market but during testing them all we felt many short comings, less comfortable and expensive being the major ones. This is fairly a big problem taking into account the pace of development taking place in states of India.
What is the uniqueness about your Startup?
We believe in technological excellence and are eager to keep learning and growing together as a family and envision to provide everyone with sustainable mobility solutions offering exciting riding experience always fueled by clean energy.
What is the revenue model? Explain your thought process.
We are a production based startup and offer mono-wheel bike at a very affordable price.The revenue will be generated by corporate sales at tech parks, industries, adventure parks, resorts and hotels and digital sales to consumers all over India.
Who are the consumers that you are targeting? How is this going to affect them?
We plan to provide corporations and industries with fleet of bikes which can assist their employees to travel in premises. It can reduce the waste time for waiting for shuttle buses and for inter-department travel. It will also avoid the stress of walking. Along with corporate sales we will focus on general sales through our website and partners as we grow our network in multiple cities to provide hassle free support to our customers. According to the ‘6w research’ we found that this market is expected to show a growth of 18% in India by 2022. Along with our product we plan to launch multiple accessories for the bike which can provide more convenience to our customers.
What is the big picture of your startup? Will it lead to something bigger? If so, how?
We plan to gain experience in Indian market and strengthen our networks around the country. Later we plan to come up with more diverse product range.
Being an automotive startup that focuses on constant research and development, we sight our startup to grow as a leading and pioneering auto-tech company in the coming years.
What is the success story of your startup in your own words?
Please write about the challenges that you or your startup faced and how you overcome them to achieve success. Make sure it should inspire others. We three have been passionate about our vision and are confident about our goals.The criticism that ever came with our failures, fueled our dreams more and made us work even harder to achieve what others thought was impossible for us. In-spite failing miserably at technical competitions and even as event organizers, we never took our steps back and faced what came forth. This, being painful in the initial days, proved to be the virtue for our positive attitude towards challenges. Being passionate for technology and automobile, we never settled for a defined technical curriculum during our engineering and ensured our active participation during the entire course. We always knew where we wished to go and hence took up the mono-wheel as our final year project, as it would ensure a close technical mentor-ship and guidance. Our hard work and dedication helped us achieve the stability in our vehicle and this added to our determination and confidence of taking this up as a venture.
The hard work really paid us back when we met our mentors at iB hubs start-up school. This has proved to be a catalysts in the hard work we put in and has skilled us with qualities that an entrepreneur should really possess. The simple story which everyone needs to realize and believe is that the only things required for success anywhere is consistency, self-discipline, passion and an obvious phrase, there is no substitute for hard work.
Any other information about your startup that you would like to share with us.
We are extending our team and looking for people having passion for bikes, are hard working and dedicated.
