Taking a ride with ‘ Albaton Automobili’

How about travelling in an electronic car?

On March 31st, 2017, the central government of India declared to convert India into full electric mobility by 2030. Banking on this opportunity, a band of car enthusiasts residing in different parts of India came together with a united mission- constructing electric cars. Meet Soumyajit Das, Subharup Sadhukhan, Rohit Roy, Soumyajyoti Halder, Krishnendu Mondal, Subhrajyoti Roy, Kiran Bn Nagesh and Soma Shekhar of Albaton Automobili. Though the team members have diverse acumen ranging from music to the arts, yet they all share a common passion for cars. Hence, the journey that started in 2009 witnessed moments of deep anguish as the team lost one of its members in 2016 to a terrible accident.

Soumyajit Das, a self-taught car builder, shares with Baishali Mukherjee the team’s journey - its highs and lows, celebrations and mourning.

The born engineer

I have been fond of designing and modelling cars, bikes and aircrafts since childhood, and by the time I was 14 years old, thanks to my parents’ encouragement, I wanted to become a car designer. Thus my journey to acquire the right skill set, knowledge and experience started. Things took up momentum from 2011 when initial research started, and in 2015 I was associated with Subharup to build his car project and that was a moment everything started to fall into place. It was an ambitious project to build a fully functional car with no budget. We managed to build a sports car around a Maruti esteem power train and make it run effectively. In 2015 we also floated our company to establish a niche sports car manufacturing enterprise in our industry stricken state of West Bengal. Electric cars came eventually as we wanted to make cars for a living as the world is now more open about electric vehicle and this segment always constitutes an unexplored avenue in automobile engineering research and development. My family invested Rs 15 lakh into my initiative between 2009 and 2017 and Rs 1 lakh as a paid-up capital and company incorporation expenses. My mother and I are the co-founders of the company. She manages the money; I get things done with the enormous effort from the team.

The team building

When we were in college, we saw Hindustan Motors closing down, Tata Nano factory not taking off. Though I used to be studying and researching on cars, initially we never thought we would launch a new company. As I found an alternative career in music industry as a guitarist and songwriter in the Bengal music circuit to raise my seed capital, I took my decision to start the company; to unite people like me to come together and build an automobile manufacturing company in Bengal. Rohit went into engineering research for powertrain development, Soumyajyoti into vehicle interior and exterior design research and I was responsible for everything else. Officially our work began in 2011 and by 2015 we were able to make a working automobile, which was built by our team mates. Though we were all involved, Subharup was instrumental to finish up the build as he was great in fabrication work. By June 18, 2015 we established Albaton Automobile Private Limited and were also able to finish the mascot car using lean start up methodology, and using savings with a bit of funding from friends and family.

The mission

Through 2016 to 2017 we were engaged in research into ways to design road legal cars that could be sold globally after manufacturing. We soon immersed ourselves into setting up the rules and regulations framework to govern our future product designs as well. At present, we are a 10 member team along with our company secretary, lawyer, intellectual property lawyer and mentors working together to create a brand and establish the company. It is a difficult task to create the product and run the various processes from design to manufacturing, given the extremely high technological know-how, entry barrier in grasp of the product and associated multitudes of technological harmonization. Still, we are on this mission to industrialize our state and the automotive industry to create employment as it is involved in creating new and attractive products that require both artistic and engineering skills to build them.

Building cars is all about knowing planning and preparing

Though our company secretary calls our effort so far to be only expenditure reflecting on financial balance sheet until now, we still consider this to be an investment in order to gain potential like a spring compressor- the more the compression, the more expansion jump when released.

We aim to launch our creation by 2020 and hit break by our second year of production. Building a car company is all about knowing what to do, finding the right team, preparing one self and investing year in research, planning and organizing.

The first car we had set out to make together is now lying in Subharup’s garage, as we did not have the resources and infrastructure. We don’t consider this to be a product, rather as a successful experiment in developing the process we want to establish our company. The model under development now is an electric sports car with ‘bragging right performance.’ They are being designed to have at least 250 km range with drop dead exotic looks and build quality. Eventually as we grow into a big company, we will expand our product line to the semi-luxury and mass products.

The way ahead

Our company is a network of people. We have a registered office and two team mates working with me at the headquarter along with some other team-mates who are based in Kolkata. Others work online from; Delhi, Indore, Pune, and Bangalore. We aim to integrate our R&D lab to a facility and setup a small factory in Kolkata.

In April issue of Wheels 2015 (magazine) the article about Subharup and the Car was first reported. In September 2015 it was also displayed at an auto show in CII building in Salt Lake. This prototype was raced at “Cannon-ball”, an organized drag racing event in 2015. In 2016 we also presented the model at Global Entrepreneur Summit at IIT Kharagpur. The car is driven occasionally, as it lacks our targeted built quality and has some technical compliance issues which we have rectified in our forth-coming models. Rest of our Research and Development work is not disclosed to the world; we like to keep the suspense growing. But we are certain we are onto creating some revolutionary technology and cars that epitomise our pursuit of passion, precision and perfection within our limited resources.

Future Possibilities for our industry is limitless. Transportation manufacturing business has been there since the Vedas and will be there in any foreseeable future. Only the tools, materials, technologies, processes and teams change according to consumer dynamics. We believe we have just got started. With critical recognition for our frugal engineering to our clarity of intent, us getting the “Best Team Dynamics” Award at National Startup Launchpad 2017 marks just the beginning as we believe our is capable of extraordinary deeds together to put India’s name on the global automotive industry eventually.

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