In India, Electric Vehicle technology is still in its growing stage, and one of the major challenges for the industry is to build a team with adequate technical and manufacturing expertise. Bala Pachyappa Co-Founder & Senior Advisor of EMF Innovations has been deeply involved with the skill development while working for Electric Vehicle motor manufacturing company. EMF Innovations has internship programmes where the students get to work and learn on real-life projects.
Technology development has always taken a back seat in India despite the abundance of technical and engineering talent even at the grassroots level in the country. While the engineering education system lacks the penchant for creating innovators, other factors such as demand for ready technology over maturing technology has given scope to mushrooming of only servicing and trading companies in India. Bala Pachyappa, Co-Founder and Senior Advisor of EMF Innovations point to this large scale inconducive context.
EMF Innovations (EMFi) is a technology-based company run by a team of engineering entrepreneurs with the objective to offer reliable electric motors for green mobility applications. Headquartered in Singapore and with the India office at Coimbatore, EMFi has Bala Pachyappa at the helm of the team for designing and developing the DC Power Train for Electric Vehicles and other future mobility solutions. Bala holds a Master’s degree in Control Engineering from BITS, Pilani and comes with over a decade of exposure and experience as a Design Engineer of semiconductor and electronics automation software, strategic planning and mentoring young minds towards innovations.
Speaking to Machine Maker, Bala Pachyappa shared his journey as an entrepreneur in India after working in Singapore for almost a decade. In 2008, he was part of the EV Start-up Ampere Vehicles, and since then he has been involved with different aspects of electric vehicles in India and abroad. Bala is now developing switched reluctance motors at EMFi. He is also the CEO of Sodion Energy which is focusing on the development of Sodium-ion battery cells.
Skill, the first hurdle
Bala says that initially, the team did not have any technical and manufacturing collaboration. “So, we had to develop the skills needed to start the innovation process while doing the motor design and make a complete product line out of India. The first hurdle has always been getting the right talent.” Coimbatore has been a place with a talent pool but the exposures were mostly on non-magnetic motors.
Bala decided to work with talents from local institutes instead of hiring from prestigious institutions. The company trained the fresh pass-outs and thus has been able to build a team of sixty people, most of them the locals. “Most of the products that we design and manufacture are all done by these people. We have launched the programme of apprenticeship for 15 – 20 people and train them for a year and induct the good candidates and send others to the industry.”
EMFi has internship programmes where the students get to work and learn on real-life projects. Another programme called PhD assets is for PhD students who have a lot of difficulty in getting and sourcing new designs. EMFi is making the required components for these people faster and cheaper through the company’s own network of suppliers. Bala says, “These are the three different programmes we are working with the industry for growing the skills and adding to our own employees.”
Not being the First Mover
In India, Electric Vehicle technology is still in its growing stage. Bala observes, “In our country, most of us want a matured technology because we want to be certain about the products and services. That is another hindrance we have to face. When one is working on new technology, risks need to be taken to direct the technology for gradual improvement. But the Indian mindset wants a ready, reliable and quality product. In the process, we lose the advantages of being the first mover. This causes a lagging of a decade or more on our part.”
The other point of concern is that the Indian market is not inclined to cover the risks of funding an emerging technology. Bala believes it is another point that also puts the industry behind in global terms. The next deterrence for emerging technologies in India is that most of the companies are interested in either trading or servicing. “They do not help the basic technology to grow. The mode of engineering education in our educational institutions has become ‘teaching science’, it is not engineering. I have the opportunities to work in a couple of states and this remains a constant as far teaching methods are concerned.”
Bala says that in our very education system we have taken away the scope of making the students do something on their own. The other part of the story is that the students prefer big corporates to innovative startups. “This is not just a problem with the EV segment, but at a bigger scale for the entrepreneurial sector.”
For anyone who would like to be a product development entrepreneur, India still has a long way to go. Bala says, “These have been the perennial problems for the EV segment and I presume this has been so for the non-IT segment as well.”
A culture hindrance for entrepreneurship
Bala is of the view that not trying out new frontiers is also a part of our cultural problem and the system has worked in those lines. “The brainy guy wants to work for an MNC, so if you look at it, either he is attached to the comfort of the status rather than following his passion. They do not feel the sense of achievement by doing things all by themselves,” Bala observes. “The practical aspects should be incorporated into our educational system and, the freedom given to the particular child to pursue what he wants to do.”
It is a starting point for the Indian entrepreneurs; it is just gathering the momentum to try new ventures. Bala is glad that the government has also taken steps to that end too. “But it needs to mature in its own sweet time. Many new players will try and many will fail and few will succeed. The ambience will change gradually with changes in investment so increasingly people will opt for entrepreneurial ventures and pursue the dreams to build something they want.”
Locals – a skill pool for the entrepreneurs
When one starts a small enterprise those who have less opportunity will join and Bala has always gone for the local talent pool. He explains, “As an entrepreneur in a rural area or tier 2 cities, we are literally left with no skilled workforce. So it is better to devise your method to get and retain the talents by hiring the locals. We forget that the best brain from the institutes with no big-name so we have opted for that and fortunately it seems to be working.”
Bala says that now with his ventures he is looking at things differently. Thanks to his shareholders and investors who have been helping him going with this model. “The members of my staff are very proud of the company and their faces glow after finishing a job properly. That is a huge satisfaction. Most of them are from rural areas and have brains working and only one need to show them what they can do. Throw them a challenge and they will learn by themselves,” concludes Bala Pachyappa of EMF Innovations.