Electric two-wheeler start-up Ather Energy has secured the rights to the AiKaan OTA (over-the-air) platform from its partner AiKaan Labs Pvt Ltd.

OTA is the cornerstone of Ather Energy’s connected vehicle platform, enabling its Ather 450 product line to be up-to-date with its software upgrades and feature offerings while also collecting field data to enhance product design and user experience.

AiKaan is a software solution to monitor, manage, securely access, and upgrade IoT edge devices. AiKaan has worked with Ather Energy since inception to develop the OTA solution and deploy all OTA updates on Ather electric scooters.

Global two-wheeler brands plan EV plunge in India

Integrating the AiKaan technology with Ather’s cloud platform, vehicles and charging infrastructure would bring about a seamless user experience, the company says.

Swapnil Jain, co-founder and CTO, Ather Energy, said, “Over the years, we have been working closely with AiKaan Labs to develop the OTA solution that makes our vehicles ever-improving two-wheelers. OTA updates for vehicles is a game-changer in this industry. At Ather, we believe the future of mobility is ‘connected’. Connected mobility will be dependent on edge device management technology.”

Foxconn sets sights on EV manufacture in Europe, India, Latin America

Chetan Kumar S, CEO, AiKaan Labs, said, “ In the coming months, we are going to experience more and more vehicle-to-everything (V2X) services. The software is going to be the key differentiator and Ather is positioned at a big advantage.”

AiKaan brings data analytics into the operations and management of edge computing sites. Its analytics-based management system is helping IT teams increase the uptime of applications running on IoT edge. It also helps reduce the cost of managing a large number of remotely connected devices.

Tesla lobbies India to slash taxes before it enters EV market

Ather’s in-house telematics platform and connectivity infrastructure has introduced, via OTA upgrades, features such as ‘guide me home’ lights, call and music control via the dashboard, remote monitoring, vehicle tracking, real-time vehicle health alerts, and more.

Ather Energy was founded in 2013 by IIT Madras alumni Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain. It is backed by the founders of Flipkart, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Hero Motocorp and Tiger Global. Ather Energy launched its electric scooter Ather 450 in 2018, followed by a new flagship offering, Ather 450X, in 2020. Ather Energy currently operates in 23 cities including Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Mysore, and Hubli.