Pioneering Post-Sales Support: Pune's EV Revolution

In Pune, where electric vehicle (EV) adoption is steadily rising, Ashwini Tiwary was among the earliest believers in the shift. At a time when most people were still skeptical about EV technology, he had already begun using a two-wheeler electric vehicle.

The year was 2017. I had just given up our last petrol vehicle and made a deliberate, irreversible decision: my family and team would commute exclusively on electric vehicles. I wasn’t naïve about the challenges, I was, after all, already eight years into building EV skilling infrastructure across India through my Autobot Academy, he recalls.

Back then, curiosity around EVs was high. At traffic signals or in parking lots, strangers would stop him with questions about how the vehicle performed, its range per charge, and what happened if it broke down mid-journey. While he was enthusiastic about the technology, nothing quite prepared him for the day his own EV failed and he was told it would take two months to be repaired at an authorised service centre.

That experience, combined with the concerns of other users, revealed a critical gap. People were interested in using an EV but were not sure about its after-sales service that internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles had. If your bike or car broke down anywhere in the city or on a highway, you could be pretty sure of calling either the company’s service centre or any garage to get it fixed. But for an EV, as I learned, it took two months in 2017, he explains. For him, this was unacceptable.

Over time, the broader EV ecosystem evolved. Charging infrastructure improved, with more stations coming up across the country, helping drive adoption. India today has over 5 million EVs, largely led by two- and three-wheelers. Yet, the after-sales service gap persists. Most manufacturers state that an EV requires zero maintenance or repairs, but the facts on the streets show something very different. As of now, we have about 10 to 15 authorised service centres run by EV manufacturers in Pune. How can they service 3 lakh EVs? Very obviously, the load is far beyond their capacity to manage. And in India, every year, 10 lakh EVs join the roads, and only 30% can be serviced by OEM centres, he points out. The mismatch between demand and service capacity is stark, both in Pune and across the country.

His research, and personal experience, highlighted the everyday challenges EV owners face: long service wait times ranging from a week to as much as four months; a complete lack of roadside assistance, leaving users stranded without help; untrained ICE mechanics attempting EV repairs without the right tools or safety protocols; and limited reach of authorised service centres, which cover only about 30% of vehicles. Even in metro cities, EV users often have to travel 8–10 km to find an authorised service point.

What I read was what I had experienced first hand with over eight years of owning, testing and logging every OEM EV brand—from Okinawa and Ather to Ola, Bajaj Chetak, Tork and many others, through early-generation technology failures and the latest software-defined vehicles, he says. We documented these failures not as frustrations but as data points. Each long wait at a service centre, each unanswered breakdown call, each ill-equipped mechanic was telling me the same thing: the ecosystem gap was systemic, not incidental. I realised that the biggest barrier to adopting EVs in India was not the charging infrastructure but the fear of being stranded with no one to call for support or service.

These insights led him to build a solution. Drawing on nearly a decade of work in EV skilling and engineering, he developed MY EV SERVICE. Our solution was not just another garage. From the outset, I knew that it had to be a system. A network. A trust infrastructure for India’s EV users, he explains.

The idea was simple in principle but complex in execution: enable any EV owner to connect with a trained, verified multi-brand EV garage and get assistance within minutes anywhere in Pune. This meant building an app that gives users easy access to a My EV Service mechanic and garage. It had to support multi-brand servicing. And I had to build a parallel app for the technician, he says.

Alongside the digital platform, he set up a physical network of service centres distributed across the city. After identifying and onboarding partners with some EV background, he established 15 multi-brand service centres across 15 pin codes in Pune, each meeting defined infrastructure requirements.

If an EV driver faces a breakdown or any issue, he simply logs on to the MY EV SERVICE app and requests what we call RSA or Roadside Assistance. Within 30 minutes, a mechanic reaches the vehicle. Since the app is powered by AI, it can detect the issues being faced by the driver. If it can be resolved on-site, our technician arrives with a smart service kit and fixes it. If it’s a major problem, the vehicle is taken to our service centre, where it can be repaired within 24 hours, he explains. In effect, users can expect resolution within a window of 60 minutes to 24 hours.

To deliver this, the company operates on three core pillars: a physical network of EV-exclusive, multi-brand service centres run on a franchise-owned, company-operated model; a proprietary technology platform that enables instant booking, live tracking, AI-assisted diagnostics, and SOS-based technician dispatch; and a talent engine powered by Autobot Academy, which trains and supplies certified EV technicians at scale. Ours is a 60-minute service delivery within one to two km proximity that’s AI-powered and human-delivered, he says, contrasting it with the long waits typical of manufacturer-run centres.

In competition, he remains confident. Our competitors have networks; we have decades of native knowledge, tools and a talent pipeline they cannot replicate, he says, noting that many current players are legacy ICE-focused companies attempting to adapt to EVs without the necessary foundation, while OEM service centres are limited to their own brands and cover only a fraction of the total EV population. Pitstop has a strong ICE network but lacks EV-exclusive infrastructure and certified technicians; GoMechanic is largely inactive post-restructuring; SpeedForce has limited regional presence; myTVS is OEM-aligned and single-brand; and OEM centres cover only 30% of the population. Internationally, Rivian Service, Geely’s EV Service Network, and Europe’s EV-Box Service demonstrate the premium of purpose-built EV service infrastructure. MY EV SERVICE is building India’s equivalent indigenously.

His USP lies in EV-exclusive infrastructure, proprietary diagnostic tools, SOPs, a live technician pipeline through Autobot Academy and Skill India, 10 years of multi-brand service data, and a technology platform designed specifically for EV service.

Ashwini has invested ₹30 lakh so far in building the MY EV SERVICE SaaS platform, two AI-powered apps, in-house tools, lab testing for SOPs, and a technician talent pool. I am looking to raise ₹50 lakh in a pre-seed round and later ₹5 crore to advance AI technology, marketing, and network expansion, he says. With operations launching this month, he projects revenues of ₹2–2.5 crore in the first quarter, estimating that each service centre could generate ₹2–3 lakh per month.

Currently, 15 MY EV SERVICE centres are opening in Pune. The plan is to expand to 80 centres across Maharashtra in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities including Mumbai, Nashik, Nagpur, Solapur, Kolhapur, and Sangli, before eventually establishing a pan-India network of over 400 centres. I want Autobot to be the category leader in the near future, he says.