Carbon pollution has risen to such extremes that a key threshold in the fight to stop climate change — limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century — will be crossed within the next 15 years.
This is one of the key findings from a landmark report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
With climate change looming, countries and consumers are realising the need to switch to greener vehicles. There is also the need to switch to EVs for public transportation to ensure sustainable mobility.
Image Credit: Prakriti E-Mobility
New-Delhi based Prakriti E-Mobility — founded in 2019 by Nimish Trivedi, Rajeev Tiwari, and Vikas Bansal — aims to solve this problem.
The EV startup provides on-demand cab services using an electric vehicle fleet. It also operates 43 EV charging stations across Delhi-NCR.
Nimish tells YourStory that he also founded a solar rooftop startup named Vyom Power in 2015, which powers the EV charging stations. Finding the EV space exciting, Nimish launched Prakriti to provide electric cabs Evera and charging infrastructure.
However, he adds that the launch of Evera cabs in 2020 was delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Subsequently, the company joined hands with the Delhi government and launched the JeEVan Seva service, using the Evera cabs for transporting COVID-19 and other patients to hospitals and clinics for treatments.
“We were about to launch Evera Cabs in March 2020 when the pandemic hit us. We partnered with the Delhi government for transporting COVID-19 patients from home to hospitals and vice versa. This is a free service offered by the government. Since we had our mobile application ready, we spoke with the government and launched JeEVan Seva powered by Evera to help people amid the pandemic,” Nimish explains.
Illustration: YS Design
On-demand electric cabs
At present, not only COVID-19 patients but also other patients can avail of the JeEVan Seva cab services from any region to hospitals and back.
The bootstrapped startup also offers cab services across 220 vaccination centres in Delhi to help ferry people to the hospital if they fall unwell after taking the vaccine.
Speaking about Evera’s services, Nimish reveals the startup has tied up with MakeMyTrip and is looking to start cab services from the Delhi airport.
“We are waiting for about a month to understand the COVID-19 situation and then we will launch the Evera mobile app to book cab services for daily rides. The services will first start from transporting passengers from the Delhi airport,” he adds.
Prakriti procures its vehicles from Tata Motors for the cab services. It is also working with Tata Power to set up the electric vehicle charging stations across Delhi-NCR.
Nimish says the drivers are provided one week after recruitment to practise and understand the driving mechanisms of an electric car.
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At present, Prakriti operates 168 cabs via across Delhi- NCR via JeEVan Seva app for transporting patients.
“We have transported about 50,000 patients to date using our cab services,” he says.
Post the launch of the Evera service with its existing fleet, users will be able to book the cabs using the Evera app and make payments online. Evera cab services will be operating on zero surge charge, where no amount of traffic or demand will push the charge of a trip and will be a flat rate 24X7.
Apart from this, drivers will not be cancelling any ride as that feature is not available for the drivers, the co-founder claims.
Moving forward, Nimish says, “We are currently looking to launch the daily rise services soon, and we plan to expand further into Tier-II cities, including Jaipur, Chandigarh, and Indore, among others.”
According to a report by Mordor Intelligence, the Indian EV market is expected to $47 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of more than 44 percent.
Similar to Prakriti, Bengaluru-based Lithium Urban Technologies also provides electric taxi services. Ride-hailing giant Ola is also gearing up for launching electric vehicles under Ola Electric.
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