2021

E-SkateBoard

VIT being a huge campus, Hriteek and Shivanshu solved their own campus commute problem by building personal light electric vehicles like electric skateboards and scooters. This is precisely when they fell in love with Electric Vehicles (EVs).

Movio & Micro-Mobility

While zooming through the campus on their sleek electric skateboards, Hriteek and Shivanshu caught the attention of VIT-TBI. The incubator nurtured their project and helped them develop it into a business model.
Soon, they registered the company 'Movio Technologies Private Limited' and secured a funding of 2.2 lakh INR to pursue their venture. They began exploring the realm of micromobility in Bangalore using personal light electric vehicles (PLEVs) and created impressive products. However, through conversations with EV riders, they quickly realized that the major issue with electric vehicles wasn't the vehicles themselves, but the batteries.

2023

Enter, Paridhi

The team strategically relocated to Delhi, attracted by its supportive EV policies and conducive environment for hardware businesses. Then the team made the final addition to its founding team, Paridhi.
Paridhi and Shivanshu, being cousins, grew up together. Shivanshu knew Paridhi always was interested in business and entrepreneurship, her background in economics and human resource management made her an ideal fit for complementing the tech-focused founders. Upon relocating to Delhi, their immediate priority was to build a team, a task that would have been significantly challenging without Paridhi's expertise and contributions.

Team Building

Movio founders built a lean team of passionate engineers and BDs. Operating initially out of a small office in Gurgaon, they focused on hardware prototyping and developing a scalable business model.
The tech team worked tirelessly, while the business development team engaged with customers to identify their pain points.
Following the lean startup methodology, they built, learned, iterated, and repeated the process to refine their products and approach.

Prototyping Stage

It took them 4 prototypes of the battery pack and 2 iterations of the swap hub to achieve their initial goal: creating a minimum viable product (MVP). They tested the entire technology stack with a small group of users to understand what worked and what didn’t. Before long, they had a fully functional prototype and a simple MVP ready to be launched.

MVP

They ran the MVP with high-intent EV riders who used their electric vehicles throughout the day to gather extensive data and validations. The MVP was tested across various use cases, from Swiggy delivery executives to heavy-cargo logistics. They also tested the flexibility of home charging combined with battery swapping, confirming that customers appreciate the convenience of charging at home while having the option to swap batteries when needed. The MVP provided the team with valuable insights.

GridXenergy Re-branding

Based on insights from the MVP and interactions with industry experts, the team realized significant changes were necessary.
Firstly, they decided to move away from limiting their solutions to low-speed EVs, recognizing the market shift towards high-speed EVs and the rising demand for personal mobility solutions. With these learnings, Movio was rebranded as GridXenergy. The battery packs were enhanced to be more powerful, with a focus on meticulous attention to detail. UI/UX improvements were implemented specifically to appeal to personal mobility users, enhancing aesthetics, design, and portability as well.