Hello everyone,
My name is Kshitij (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram). I’m the main founder of FuelEV, and I’m here to address the comments on the forum over the past few days. The words I’m about to share here are personal in nature.
Background
I’ve always had a passion for building something. I took up electrical engineering for my bachelor’s to launch myself towards a career in aerospace engineering. But when I joined a business club in college, I suddenly felt a connection. The idea of building a world-changing global business enamored me, and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. I didn’t get a lot of support from my family since they didn’t come from a business background. For their happiness, I persevered until I finished my bachelor’s and stood at a crossroads- an electrical engineer job in Madras’ metro construction industry at Larsen&Toubro (one of the largest infrastructure conglomerates in India), or a business development role in a then-small devtech startup named Hasura (currently a unicorn). After a lot of argument and discussion, I chose the business development role. I was surrounded by brilliant engineers and thinkers, and I am so glad I chose this path. It was my ticket to understanding how startups work, and how founders think. Working personally with them, I was responsible for growing the developer base using Hasura. I led partnerships with incubators and accelerators to have their incubates use Hasura early in their stack, and also led the student ambassador program that was conducted in partnership with IIT Madras’ app development course.
I’m an avid traveler- having traveled to 30 countries and lived in India, Indonesia & Singapore. Given my passion for travelling, I wanted to work in that space. My second job was at Headout, an a16z Top 100 Marketplace platform that sells tickets to experiences across the world. I joined their distribution team, responsible for selling our inventory to travel agencies and travel companies globally. This turned out to be a $1Mn GMV vertical in the company, and I also led efforts to clean up our affiliate program- leading to a loss reduction of $150k on an annualized basis. My favourite project here was building the group bookings vertical from scratch, and taking it to a $400k GMV vertical in just 5 months. I honestly think this was the moment I got the much-needed confidence to start my own business.
I took the plunge and launched my company, Showman. The premise was simple- Indians living around the world had limited to no access to Indian content. We wanted to create an OTT platform for them, along with the ability to watch newly launched movies right on Day 1. Due to the onset of the COVID pandemic, we pivoted to launching within India itself. I negotiated movie rights of films from the top Indian movie industries as well as a ticketing partnership with one of India’s largest companies in the space. Our product was used by over 100k users with a 30% retention rate. We had been bootstrapped up until this point, and as we were starting our fundraising journey- we received an acquisition offer from Instamojo. Instamojo was one of the largest startups in India, and we decided to accept the offer. Subsequently, I joined them as their product and strategy lead for their new vertical- online shop builder. We launched some exciting features for merchants (including product bundling and CRM) that had a direct impact of 13% on our topline revenue.
Next, I joined Colexion as their head of strategy, and we launched the world’s first cricket NFT game on the Polygon chain. With 100k users in 3 months and a 30% M1 retention- we had a great start. I also assisted with fundraising and led investor relations. I still had a feeling of unfinished business and decided to retry building.
I decided to build a company in the financial services space. We started building Ependio- an AI-powered wealth tech platform that could help users with investment recommendations. Given the highly regulated nature of the industry, we worked closely with government agencies as well as the Securities Board of India to procure the relevant licenses to operate. We also raised an angel round to fund our data training efforts. $1Mn AUM and 4k customers later, we realized we hadn’t found PMF. After failing to secure a follow-on round, we decided to shut the shop.
FuelEV and How It Started
Travelling in a cab one day, my driver almost immediately stopped the car and asked me to deboard. Upon inquiry, he told me the drivers are protesting the recent commission increase from Uber. It got me thinking- corporations should not be able to unilaterally change rules as they wish. A decentralized format to run such an operation would not only be more prudent but also potentially the next big thing.
Utkarsh Goyal (a co-founder at YRAL), who I have known for a very long time, was interested in hearing me out. I knew he was building in Web3, and was confident he’d give me honest feedback. It’s never great having to shut shop, so I was still a little vulnerable. Utkarsh and the team at YRAL gave me very helpful advice with respect to building on the Internet Computer. They also introduced me to other people who might be interested in the project. I assembled a small team through references and acquaintances, and we got together and started planning our next steps. We’ve made our connection to YRAL very clear from Day 1 across all our communication.
This led to our first attempt to launch the SNS, which failed to pass the community vote on NNS. After going through the community feedback, we course-corrected and started from scratch. We also realized that while Spain continues to remain an exciting market- it is not the most cost-effective market to begin operations from. But we were determined to pursue it and decided to go back to the drawing board. While we were bootstrapping, we started researching alternate markets that could be the first launch market for FuelEV. Favourable conditions along with the rise in demand for premium experiences shifted our focus back to India, a market I’ve built in extensively. We conducted user interviews to understand what the user’s pain points were. In a duopoly of Uber and Ola in the Indian cab market, users complained of poor cab quality and unreliable experiences. Similar complaints were seen in the car rental space, and we realized India now has a sizable population that needs premium and reliable services. This is not being tackled by anyone in the rental space, and we decided to carve out a niche for ourselves here. We were excited about the potential of FuelEV, and continued bootstrapping the company till we were ready to launch our second SNS attempt. Vehicle acquisition also turned out to be an unexpected challenge, owing to the demand from companies like Uber, Ola, Shoffr, Blusmart, Evera, etc. in the ride-hailing space. After extensive efforts, we were able to acquire a vehicle from Morris Garages. We continued building our tokenization platform and rental booking platform. Once the vehicle was delivered, we started generating rental revenue. That is when we launched our second SNS attempt, and we’re thankful for the support of the community in making this happen.
What we’ve been up to since the SNS
In June 2024 when we first submitted to become an SNS DAO, we announced that FUEL tokens would be airdropped to the community members on the successful completion of the FuelEV SNS Decentralization Sale. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach the milestone then. Hence, following the successful completion of our SNS, we are prioritizing the distribution of FUEL tokens for our airdrop campaign. To ensure that every eligible participant receives their tokens, we asked the participants to verify/update their NNS wallet details. This exercise was concluded recently. The team is working on completing the necessary calculations and preparing a budgetary proposal for the withdrawal of the required number of tokens from the DAO Treasury for distribution to the airdrop participants. We will be submitting this proposal shortly for community approval.
In the meantime, we are working on launching our operations in 2 business segments in India -
- Electric Vehicle (EV) fleet on Uber Black
- An EV-only Self Drive Car Rental Service
The current EV vehicle would be deployed on Uber Black as we expand our fleet and launch our EV-only Self Drive Car Rental Service. This would allow us to generate immediate cash flows for the NFT token holders, while we figure out the legal and operational nuances of the self-drive service. Furthermore, we are actively working on expanding our fleet in Mumbai and will be opening up further tokenization slots for the expansion of the network in the city.
While a majority of the newly acquired fleet would be deployed on Uber Black to ensure consistent cash flows for the token investors, some vehicles would be allocated to the Self Drive Rental initiative. These vehicles would become the initial vehicles for the self-drive rental service, which would then be opened to all EV owners in the country. These EV owners would be able to list and rent their cars on a short-term and long-term basis (similar to Turo in the US and Zoomcar in India but exclusively for EVs). The self-drive market is still in its early stages in India and we are working with some of the foremost legal firms in the country to ensure airtight regulatory compliance.
To ensure seamless operations and expansion, we have also initiated various regulatory and compliance processes in India. These steps would ensure a robust and legally sound foundation for our operations in the Indian market. Additionally, to facilitate the operations of the DAO, we have initiated discussions with lawyers in Europe and the US to establish a legal entity in an optimal jurisdiction.
Just a quick update on why the business dashboard stopped working just after the completion of the SNS. Unfortunately, while the SNS Sale was ongoing, our vehicle met with an accident during one of the rental bookings.
A video of the damaged FuelEV vehicle
Thankfully, all the passengers were unharmed. We promptly recovered the vehicle and sent it for repairs. While the repair work took some time, we are happy to report that the insurance claim was approved and the vehicle should be up and running in no time.
Even though it’s just one car today, we’re working hard on expanding our fleet size so that this doesn’t happen again. We’re confident of building a large outcome for FuelEV and the community in the coming months. We have also spoken about our journey extensively through various AMAs and PR articles-
- CoinMarketCap article
- The Print article
- AMA with ICP HUB South Africa
- AMA with ICP HUB Philippines
- AMA with ICP HUB Indonesia
- AMA with ICP HUB Townhall Asian Alliance
- AMA with ICP HUB TownHall North America Alliance
We’ve just begun working towards our vision and will continue to do so. We’re a real group of people building something real and solving a real problem using the IC, and I think we’re working hard to achieve that goal. As founders of the project, we’re locked in for four years (as clearly stated in the SNS proposal), and that’s the all-in attitude that permeates through the entire team. I don’t come from the best colleges, and I was always the underdog. I’ve had to follow an unconventional path to stand out, and my ability to get things done and be relentless in the face of adversity is my superpower. We fully intend to take FuelEV forward with that passion.
That being said, we, FuelEV, have faced a lot of backlash from the community. It’s been just one month since the SNS has completed and we have been working hard to onboard more cars in the fleet. Given enough time, we can showcase FuelEV’s true potential and become the first venture to generate revenue on blockchain from the very first quarter of operations as a DAO.
As FuelEV, we would completely adhere to any community feedback with respect to the functioning and governance of the DAO, related to the treasury or otherwise.
Thank you once again for your support everyone. Looking forward to building!