India - FortunEV - Ridesharing, page-22

Hi Afd, Chand and others. Sorry about the delayed the response. I've been juggling a few clubs lately.

Regarding that edit on Wikipedia, when I first saw it I did get an inkling that it probably had been added by someone in India who worked for Future Motors Corporation.

The logic behind my thinking was partly on account of the fact the user's name appeared to be Indian, but also because in the same edit, the user in question also deleted a chunk of information that had previously been on the page:

...In March 2021, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with Bird Electric Mobility, of the Bird Group of India, for a test ride sharing project in India involving re-branded Super Soco Cux electric Scooters...

I don't see why the editor needed to delete that paragraph, as it was basically factually correct, and referenced, whereas the new line the editor added about the deal with FortuneEV in December hasn't got a source cited at all to back it up. So basically, whoever did the edit seems to have been an insider and it looks like they've deleted the mention of Bird because it was a competitor to their own company.

Apparently, there has been a problem on Wikipedia with users from India receiving payments to make edits to pages, and the edits to referred to above might be in keeping with this.

For a long time, I was personally sceptical about the notion that there was an issue with users being paid to do edits for companies. It seemed to me like it would be a lot of effort for a paltry reward.

Bear in mind that when a new page is created on Wikipedia, it has to be up to a certain standard, and if it isn't it gets shoved off into a kind of twilight zone, and there it will stay until the editor who created it, or other editors, bring the article up to an acceptable standard.

When that happens, one of the admins will give it the green light, and it goes back onto Wikipedia proper. However, this process can take months, and there is no guarantee of success.

But even then, once an article is on Wikipedia, in theory anyone can edit it. So basically, if someone started up an article on a company they work for, in the hope of raising the profile of the business, someone who works for a competitor, or a user who doesn't like the company, might add material to the article that is detrimental to the image of the company. As well as that, corporate articles that sound like they have been written by some PR person for the company don't tend to last, they'll end up being reviewed by other editors and subjected to a major re-write at the very least.

In summary, a Wiki page in my opinion is a bit of a double-edged sword, and it is not necessesarily an advantage for a company to have one. As such, it seemed to me that paying someone to create an article on Wikipedia was largely a waste of money, though, I would presume that given India is a developing country, there are probably of plenty of people there who would be willing to engage in such activity for peanuts.

Anyway, getting back on to the topic in question, the 'Future Motors Corporation', I sent an email to the company about this earlier in the week to check the veracity of the edit on Wikipedia.

I received a response, which confirmed that the company is the new distributor for certain models, and they have sent a couple of containers to the group already. I didn't get the impression it was really much of a big deal.

I do find the timing interesting, however. There are a couple of reasons I say this.

Firstly, back in October, the Indian company Revolt Motors was taken over by RattanIndia. The relevance here is that the Revolt bikes had a remarkable resemblace to the TS model of Super Soco, although the Revolt management have never actually acknowledged they were made from Super Soco motorcycle parts.

According to the insider who edited the Wiki page, the deal between Vmoto and this Future Motors Corporation group was struck in December, and related to the distribution of just two models, one of which was the Super Soco TS.

In other words, it looks to me that the deal with Future Motors Corp might partly be related to the takeover of Revolt, and what might add some weight to that suspicion is that in the same month that Vmoto apparently entered into the agreement with Future Motors, Revolt's registration numbers in India were abysmal, if the following update from an Indian news site last week, is to be believed:

...Notable names missing from the top 10 sales list included Revolt Motors (also being investigated for misappropriation of subsidies), which saw registrations of its RV400 electric motorcycle plummet to just 37 units in December, and Bounce Infinity, which could only ship 590 units of its e1 electric scooter..

The 'misappropriation of subsides' referenced above relates to the requirement that EV companies source at least 50% of their components locally in return for monetary benefits from the government, a scheme known as FAME II, in which end users are provided with subsidies for the purchase of EVS. Already, two Indian EV companies that were under investigation, Hero Electric and Okinawa Autotech, have had their subsidies halted.

The cloud over Revolt is possibly a second factor underlying this new arrangement with Future Motors.

Putting two and two together, I'd say that there is a good chance that Revolt is dead in the water. The deal with Future Motors Corp suggests that Vmoto have given up on them, or at the very least, are hedging their bets.

This highlights why I am cold on India. The margins there are too thin, and the competition too intense. The report, quoted above for example, noted that Ola sold 17,000 scooter across India in December. Compare that to the 5,000 units sold by Vmoto in India in the first nine months of 2022, as mentioned in the quarterly update released at the end of October.

I did manage to contact the management of the company last year, and mooted the 'India question'. To offer them a 'right of reply', this is what they stated in reponse:

...in the India market, we sell to importers and they take the risks because they do not have strong foundations and do not have established supply chain in India for electric motorcycles/scooters market, and they do have requirements for well-designed products and good quality parts, which Vmoto fit in well. While the margins for India market will be thinner, the potential large quantities is worth for us to pursue opportunities in India and the risks are limited for us...

It does seem to me that Vmoto's products are at a competive disadvantage in India, as presumeably, unlike many of their competitors, they won't be getting a boost from the FAME II subsidies. I'm guessing that might be partly behind Vmoto's recent enthusisam for Indonesia, which to my eyes looks to be a more promising market for the company to pursue.