Product Development Plan of E-scooter

Assignment Taken

Product Development Plan

Case Understanding

We are required to come up with a business plan to produce a product that falls into the electric vehicle segment and plan an end-to-end business strategy to set up the company and run it successfully.

BCS Solution Summary

We will be producing customizable electric scooters where the customers can customize both the design and key specifications of the scooter based on which the price range of the scooter will differ. We will be outsourcing most of the parts of the scooters and will focus mostly on the assembly of the bike. The overall lead time has to be optimized and as minimal as possible since the scooter production will be order basis.

Solution

1. Ideation - 

The monthly two-wheeler demand in the Indian market is around 12 lakhs. As most of the two-wheeler users fall under the middle-income class and having said that they contribute to 60% of the Indian population, we can expect 70 to 80% of the two-wheeler demand to be driven by the middle-class citizens who look for optimal and budget-friendly vehicles that suit their needs. With fuel prices increasing day by day, electric vehicles are the most sustainable solution for the future two-wheeler demand. While we can expect the electric vehicle market to boom in the upcoming year, we expect the general want among the motorcycle users to own a unique and customized bike to be another important factor in deciding the two-wheeler preferences. Keeping this in mind, we’ve come with an electric scooter prototype that can be both exclusive and cheap based on the customer's preferences. 

2. Product Definition - 

Our electric scooter will come with a range of customization based on the customer's needs and affordability. We’ve decided to provide customization at two levels - Design and Key Features. 

i) Design - Customers will be able to design the look of their scooter according to their taste - Either classic or contemporary with different colors and look. 

ii) Key Features - In addition to the design customization, the customers will also be able to choose the key features of the scooter from the available range. These key features include battery capacity, battery charging time, motor power and maximum speed. 

Based on the design and key features chosen by the customers, the cost of the scooter will also vary. The main idea is to cater to both the segment of customers who look for affordable motorcycles with minimal features and the ones who look for exclusive motorcycles with premium specs

3. Prototyping - 

As a first step, we will go ahead and conduct market research to identify the customer needs and assess their willingness to switch to electric motorcycles to make sure both customer needs and our product’s value proposition are identical. This would also help us validate our idea and identify the right target audience. 

Once insights are drawn from the market research, we will go ahead and make modifications to the existing prototype using the previous experience and expertise of our teammates to ensure that our product addresses all the needs of our desired target audience.  

4. Product Design/Development -

Once the working prototype is developed, we will go ahead define product design and development protocols. We’ve decided to outsource most of the parts that we will be needing for the scooter so that we don’t have to set up any manufacturing plant and the overall product development process is simplified. 

We will partner with different dealers to procure scooter parts with varied specifications that we are looking to offer to the customer and will just have an in-house assembling team to assemble the product based on the customer's needs. We will carefully assess the procurement period of each part and product assembling period, and try to optimize it as much as possible to reduce the lead time to deliver the product once an order is placed.  

5. Testing -

Once design and development protocols are laid out, we are good to go ahead with the first stage of testing. At this stage, we are planning to manufacture a few scooters in two variants - budget and premium edition and go ahead with a comprehensive testing process to make sure we are able to keep up with all the promised value propositions. A robust and critical testing process will be done to assess the performance of each part and the efficiency of product development and delivery before we let the customer test the product. 

Once the product passes the initial stage of testing, we are good to proceed with beta testing where we will pick a few volunteers from the desired target group to test the product. As this process will include regular usage of the scooter within the test period, we will be collecting continued feedback from the volunteers to assess the product performance and customer satisfaction. 

6. Commercialization -

After the testing process turns out to be a success, we can go ahead with mass production of the scooter. Since our scooter is based on user customization, we will open online ordering right after the beta testing to start working on the production. In order to make sure we manage to meet the demand, we will expand the production in stages by targeting a few cities in a specific state or group of states and then move on to other cities and states based on our production capacity. We will leverage the power of different marketing channels from digital ads including social media and search engine ads to mass media including TV, radio, and newspaper ads in order to create awareness and buzz about the product. 

Conclusion

Production of customizable electric scooters is proposed where the customers can customize both the design and key specifications of the scooter based on which the price range of the scooter will differ. We will be outsourcing most of the parts of the scooters and will focus mostly on the assembly of the bike. The overall lead time has to be optimized and as minimal as possible since the scooter production will be order basis.

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