Mahesh Babu, CEO of Hinduja group electric vehicle arm Switch Mobility, vividly remembers the April evening 12 years ago when M S Dhoni lifted a Nuwan Kulasekara ball over the boundary rope to win India a second ICC World Cup trophy after 28 years. “I will always remember that six,” he says. “Dhoni’s leadership is inspiring. I love cricket. The game teaches us leadership lessons – that it isn’t over till the last ball is bowled,” he says.

As a young student of N Krishnaswamy Mudaliar School in Vellore, Mahesh Babu remembers being always curious. After completing his post-graduation in engineering from BITS Pilani, he joined the R&D department of Ashok Leyland as a trainee. “I was keen to do combustion development because I have always been passionate about engineering and doing something with the engine,” he says. “Around that time, Ashok Leyland’s collaboration with Hino and Iveco was on and I got an opportunity to learn about turbo charged engines, which were new at that time,” he says.

Later, he met Pawan Goenka who was heading Mahindra & Mahindra’s auto division. “He appointed me project leader for the Scorpio turbo engine in 1998. The first turbo engine for Scorpio was launched in 2001,” he says. Four years later, the tech game changed as new emission norms mandated common rail engines. “I was already working on the common rail engine and then I got the opportunity to work on the full vehicle and the new Scorpio was launched in 2005. We worked with Bosch and launched the common rail programme in 13 months which was a record anywhere in the world,” he says.

More than ten years and more successful launches later, Mahesh Babu decided he wanted to move from product to strategy, and from internal combustion to electric vehicles. “I wanted to do something in business, so I moved to Mahindra Reva,” he says. In 2016 M&M launched three electric products – the e-Supro van, the E2O Plus city car and the e-Verito sedan.

“It became clear that the most perfect fit for an EV is three-wheelers in which M&M was not very strong so we worked on the Mahindra Treo and launched it in November 2018,” he says. The product made Mahindra market leader in electric last mile mobility. Today two- and three-wheelers form the bulk of India’s EV sales.

So how did he move from passenger and light commercial vehicles to electric buses, the big focus for Switch Mobility? “When Covid happened I realized that technology can transform the lives of people and it became obvious that the focus for EVs should be not just cars but public mobility,” he says. That was when the “Switch opportunity” came to Mahesh Babu. “The company was going for a global play which was exciting,” he says. His corner room stint in Switch has already started spawning electric products to match demand patterns. “We launched India’s first electric double decker bus in August 2022 and now we’re preparing to globally launch the E1 electric bus in Europe and multiple global markets,” says Mahesh Babu.

Mahesh Babu is more than aware of the challenges that EVs face. Among them financing, particularly given the global slowdown. “People are holding back before they invest but since we are part of the Hinduja group, we have the group supporting us.” Switch too has been working on a fundraise though nothing has been signed and sealed as yet.

There are market pinches too. “The government wants 10,000 electric buses a year, which will be sold on a 10-12 year contract,” he says. “If the automobile industry has to invest in this, it will need `15,000 crore every year in charging, depot infrastructure, running and maintenance.” Multiply that for 12 years and the investment comes to `2 lakh crore. “Who will finance this and how – it’s a huge challenge,” he says. Things are a little less complex for light commercial vehicles. “Vehicles like Dost and Bada Dost work for last mile connectivity,” says Mahesh Babu. “It is the right time to be in e-commercial vehicles at least for the next 5-10 years.” He is playing till the last ball, to hit it out of the park like Dhoni.

Courtesy: TOI