Ather Energy acquires rights to the AiKaan’s Over-the-Air (OTA) platform

• Ather Energy gains end to end control over its connected vehicle software development
• Strengthens its tech capabilities around OTA and  remote management

Ather Energy, India’s first electric two-wheeler company to offer features and specification upgrades to existing consumers, has obtained the rights to the AiKaan platform from its OTA (Over-the-air) partner, AiKaan Labs Pvt Ltd. AiKaan provides the industry’s first Edge & Fog infrastructure provision and control solution that is designed for IoT deployments. AiKaan has been working with Ather Energy since its inception to develop the OTA solution, and has played a pivotal role in deploying all OTA updates on Ather electric scooters so far. With the new rights to AiKaan’s strategic platform, Ather Energy now further strengthens its connectivity platform with complete control over the OTA update of the software.

Speaking on this development Swapnil Jain, Co-Founder and CTO, Ather Energy said “Over the years, we have been working closely with Aikaan Labs to develop the OTA solution that makes our vehicles ever-improving two-wheelers. OTA updates for vehicles is a capability that is a game-changer in this industry.  At Ather, we strongly believe the future of mobility is ‘connected’. Connected mobility will be strongly dependent on edge device management technology. The addition of Aikaan’s technology will further accelerate intelligent vehicles, thus revolutionising our commute and life experiences seamlessly.”

OTA is the cornerstone of Ather’s connected vehicle platform, enabling its Ather 450 product line to be up-to-date with its latest software and feature offerings while also collecting field data to enhance product design and user experience remotely. Integrating the Aikaan technology with Ather’s Cloud platform, vehicles, and charging infrastructure would accelerate the end-to-end smart and connected use cases with a seamless user experience.

Chetan, CEO, Aikaan Labs said, “In the coming months, we are going to experience more and more Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) services. The software is going to be the key differentiator and Ather is positioned at a big advantage. AiKaan’s management and orchestration technologies will accelerate the transformation of the way we experience connected two-wheelers.”

Ather Energy has been investing in connected capabilities since inception to redefine mobility and vehicle ownership over time. Ather’s in-house telematics platform and connectivity infrastructure offers smooth experiences to its customers and introduced new features via OTA upgrades such as guide me home lights, call and music control via the dashboard, remote monitoring, vehicle tracking, real-time vehicle health alerts, and many more. The Ather Energy Community and consumer research have driven the past OTA software upgrades. Being the only company to have released OTA upgrades, Ather Energy’s products are the only ever-improving two-wheeler unlike any other two-wheeler in the market.

About Ather 450X

The Ather 450X is one of the quickest and the smartest scooters in its category and comes in four colours: Grey, Green, and White along with the limited-edition Series 1. The scooter is powered with a 6kW PMSM motor, a  2.9 kWh lithium-ion battery, and comes with 4 riding modes. In addition to Eco, Ride, and Sport, Ather Energy has introduced a new high-performance mode, ‘Warp’. Ather 450X can go from 0 to 40 kmph in just 3.3 sec in Warp mode, making it the quickest scooter in the 125cc category and the perfect choice to navigate through city traffic. The Ather 450X  can fast-charge at 1.5km per minute, making it the quickest charging rate in the electric two-wheeler category. Additionally, the electric scooter has a 4G SIM card and Bluetooth connectivity, allowing riders to manage phone calls and music on the touchscreen dashboard. The 7” touchscreen dashboard, comes with a colour depth of 16M and a Snapdragon Quad-Core processor. Ather 450X utilizes Android Open Source to offer Google Map navigation, on-board diagnostics, and other unique features like Over-the-air updates, Auto Indicator off, and Guide-me-home lights.

About Ather Energy:

Ather Energy, one of India’s first intelligent electric vehicle manufacturers was founded in 2013 by IIT Madras alumni, Tarun Mehta, and Swapnil Jain. It is backed by the founders of Flipkart -Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal- Hero Motocorp and Tiger Global. Ather Energy launched India’s first truly intelligent, electric scooter – Ather 450 in 2018, followed by their new flagship offering Ather 450X in 2020. Ather has also installed a comprehensive public charging network, Ather Grid, designed and built in India. With 200+ charging points across India, Ather Grid is one of the largest fast-charging networks for electric vehicles in the country. The company’s product line has won 37 awards in design, automotive, and technology categories. With 58 Indian and international patent applications, 109 trademarks, and 118 Indian and International design registrations to its name, Ather Energy aims to provide consumers with the best possible ownership experience. Ather Energy currently operates in 23 cities including Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Mysore, and Hubli.

About Aikaan:

AiKaan is “Application orchestration and device management system for IoT Edge”. Essentially, AiKaan is a software solution to monitor, manage, securely access, and upgrade IoT Edge devices. Performance monitoring on 10,000 devices, for example, is a tremendous task, AiKaan brings data analytics into the operations and management of edge computing sites. They use system telemetry data collected from devices and applications, to identify failure and sub-optimal operations of applications and devices. Aikaan’s analytics-based management system is helping IT teams increase the uptime of applications running on the IoT edge. It also helps reduce the operation cost of managing the vast population of remotely connected devices.