The clay department’s workshop is kept deliberately plain: bright white tube lights overhead, and a temperature that’s never allowed to drift outside 19 to 25 degrees. Any warmer and the clay softens unpredictably under the modellers’ hands; any cooler and it turns stiff and unworkable. 

Inside, a tiny team of three works. 

Karthik Suresh, Swapnil Chingonda and Audhiraj Goswami have spent years learning to read a scooter’s surface with their hands. Times have changed. Most of the industry has moved on to CAD, simulation, 3D printing. But River has chosen to stay behind, in a small room full of clay, because some details don’t give themselves up to a screen. A clay model lets you test a scooter the way a screen never can: you can sit on it, feel the lines and the angles under your hands, manoeuvre the handles, and ask your own body whether it fits. A screen can flatter a form. Clay shows you where it wouldn’t.

The three were college mates before they were colleagues, and they arrived at River separately. Swapnil first, helping shape the Indie from the very beginning, then Audhiraj and Karthik following after. None of them set out to do this. Life brought each of them, in its own way, to the automotive clay sculpting PG course at MIT Pune. And clay, a rather difficult subject to fall in with, held onto them.

Making a life-size clay model of a scooter starts with a finalised sketch. Designers pin it to the studio wall, and the three begin building outward from a base frame, shaping the surface by hand. They don’t model the whole scooter by hand, though. One half is sculpted, and the other is replicated by machine, mirrored to keep the proportions exact.

Karthik says it’s his least favourite step. Manoeuvring the intimidating machine does take a lot from one, but getting the proportions right matters. Swapnil remembers models that had to be scrapped and rebuilt entirely because the proportions were off. 

Even with volume, proportions, and lines in mind, the team doesn’t follow the design to a t while sculpting. They let instinct take over, and that instinct often shows up as a series of questions: Does this bend feel natural? Should this curve be more curvy?

“This is the most sensory-oriented part of designing a scooter,” Swapnil says. “It’s the stage where the real tests happen.” Do the legs and hands fall where they need to? Is the ergonomic triangle accommodating? How would a tall rider feel on this scooter and what about a short one?

Once a model’s silhouette is finished, it’s scanned and analysed, then cleaned up before it’s sent onward to be built. Even at this stage, the team doesn’t treat the blueprint as final. They adjust as they go, guided as much by instinct as by spec.

And in clay, a mistake is another chance to look at form differently. “Redo it, and keep going.” The team unanimously agrees.

Swapnil remembers the first days of working on Indie. “The brief was simple on paper: build a scooter that was instantly identifiable and built around utility.” Simple briefs rarely stay simple in clay. Alongside Vipin George and Design Head Sanoj Vazhiyodan, Swapnil modelled and remodelled the Indie until everyone in the room was convinced.

Ask the team why clay still matters in an industry that can simulate almost anything on a screen, and the answers turn reflective rather than technical.

“A scooter,” Swapnil says, “is the most intimate vehicle there is. You touch far more of its surface than you would a car’s, while riding it, washing it, resting a hand on the seat while it’s parked. That constant contact means touch has to guide the design, not just the eye.” It’s also what makes sculpting a two-wheeler harder than a four-wheeler: there’s simply less surface to hide an error, and more of it meets skin.

“Clay is where the feel of a scooter gets communicated,” Audhiraj observes. “Not described. Felt.”

Vipin frames it a little differently. 

Design, he thinks, is a mix of engineering and art, and clay is where the art happens. It’s when human touch and emotion get translated into a machine, so that the machine ends up speaking back to whoever rides it.

Vipin points out that a sketch is a 2D read of a scooter; a clay model is the first 3D one, and there are always discrepancies between what works on paper and what works at full scale. It’s the clay stage that tests hand position, foot position, and the angles. It is also when you get an idea of how volumes actually meet in real space, where panel lines fall, how one surface transitions into the next: things a flat sketch can only gesture at.

The industry’s newer approach is to go from sketch to 3D digital model to milled clay sculpture. The latter is a mechanical process that carves a form directly from a digital file. It cuts out the need for a person by a mile. It’s faster but far more expensive.

“Our clay team shapes a scooter by hand, and is more efficient.” Vipin grins proudly. But there’s another reason why this process means so much, “Design that comes from a thinking mind ends up more original. A milling machine can’t give you that.”

To Jordygt500, know that your patience and interest are genuinely appreciated. Here’s hoping this peek behind the scenes feeds your curiosity. 

River had 50 stores across the country by January 2026. And by December, we’ll easily be stepping into three digits. 

To really understand how we put a pin on the map, I had a conversation with Ranjana Meena from the Dealer Development team. “There are 200 EV brands in the market. Everyone knows how to sell. A sale gets a scooter on the road, but service keeps the relationship going.” Ranjana goes on to explain how River decided to take a different approach. “We give the service bay the same attention as the showroom floor. With the EV market being so crowded, there had to be a clear differentiator. So we kept our expansion plan simple: grow together with dealers who care just as much about the journey after the sale.”

This philosophy makes a service workshop an absolute non-negotiable. When River opens a store, we look for partners willing to build from the workshop first to the storefront last. This approach simply means that the workshop also gets a spotlight. That River Service is just as important.

This simple plan has been crucial in identifying how and with whom River partners, and what convinces us to trust them.

Who gets to hold the keys
For a company known for its agility, our approach to retail expansion is intentionally slow and steady. River’s expansion is more or less proportional to a dealer’s personal growth plan. When dealers are ambitious and committed to the cause just as much as River is, both businesses win. 

There’s a constant push-and-pull effect of how to do better. We challenge our dealers to set higher operational standards, and they teach us how to adapt on the ground. Like how to set up a store in just 22 days! Or how a single conversation can convince an industry titan to open 5 stores in 10 months!

When I asked how River determines whom to work with, Ranjana mentioned having an eligibility list and a compatibility metric. “We look for partners who treat River like their own, and know how to grow the brand’s visibility in their specific region. They should have a good understanding of marketing River and the product. These should be people working on-ground and really willing to grow alongside the company. Because we’re not just looking to open one store with them; we aim to expand to at least five stores per dealer.”

Ambitious indeed!

Part of that eligibility comes down to a strict manpower prerequisite: 8 people dedicated to the store experience, and 7 technicians dedicated exclusively to the workshop. The company has done the math and tested the floor mechanics enough to know that starting with 15 people is what keeps a store running smoothly from Day 1.

Beyond the headcount, River also takes into consideration how those 15 people are treated on a daily basis. People-first or profit-first? Do dealers consistently provide basic amenities? Do they nip unruly behaviour in the bud? Can staff voice their opinions? Will staff have regular training and upskilling? A showroom floor is only as good as the daily dignity shown to the people standing on it.

At the end of the day, a dealer partner can either make or break a brand’s reputation in a new market. We choose to build our network on shared standards rather than sheer store count. It’s a longer process, but this discipline is paying off. We didn’t secure a 3% market share in the EV two-wheeler segment with just 1 product and 76 stores by chance—we earned it because every River dealer cares as much about the customer experience as we do.

It’s a longer process that takes patience, persuasion, some more patience, and determination.

Jordygt500, you’d know a thing or two about patience. We’re happy to share that River is definitely coming to Mumbai this year. And we’re hoping to see you soon.

That simple sentence became one of the defining briefs for Indie’s storage.

Long before they thought about litres, grocery bags or luggage, the team set out to solve one everyday frustration: where do two helmets go once the ride is over?

Most scooters could carry a mid-size helmet. Few could comfortably carry two. And it was always a gamble if your helmet happened to be slightly larger than average. You’d push down on the seat, lean your weight into it, maybe even body slam it shut—just to hear that satisfying click. It seemed like a small inconvenience but it happened every single day. 

“We designed the storage for the rider and the pillion, keeping the focus equally on both,” explains Vaibhav, Lead Designer, Industrial Design (ID) team. 

He goes on to explain a common inconvenience for two-wheeler riders. “Once you’re at your destination, what happens to the helmets? Usually, they’re dangling from the handlebar, swinging off an arm, or relying on some jugaad that isn’t safe from theft or damage. So we thought, why not have storage that’s actually usable? Put both helmets inside, lock it, and forget about it. If you need to store anything else, there’s the glove box too. This makes the whole experience completely hassle-free!”

As the philosophy behind Indie evolved, the goal became to build The SUV of Scooters. Storage naturally became one of its defining features.

Today, that’s exactly what many owners remember first. They rarely talk about litres. Instead, they talk about what the storage lets them do.

The bare necessities 

The first question wasn’t how many litres the storage should hold. It was what the storage should comfortably carry.

For Vipin, the benchmark was a European full-face racing helmet—one of the largest helmets you can buy. If that fit snugly, everything else would follow. 

Much of the scooter’s architecture was centred on creating usable storage, wherein the needs and everyday functions of the rider dictated what worked. It also became one of the earliest expressions of River’s utility-lifestyle philosophy: where everyday practicality creates the freedom to do more. 

“Because large storage was a defining requirement, how we packaged most components played out differently,” Vaibhav says. “It was an inside-out design philosophy. Once the absolute necessities like the motor and the battery found its place, around that came the storage.”

From there, it became an exercise in making the most of every bit of available space.

The team kept asking the same questions: Could the storage go a little deeper? Could it go a little wider? Could another pocket of unused space be reclaimed?

50 litres of underseat storage was the first blueprint. But iterations revealed that it was becoming less about the number of litres and more about what the space represented. For instance, the depth and shape determined if it can fit a full-face helmet or an open-face helmet. Ultimately, 43 litres was found to be the practical limits of what would fit inside a scooter—that it could carry two helmets while keeping intact its architecture, proportions, and riding position. 

The invisible work 

Vipin likes to joke, “Indie is basically two boxes. You connect them, put two wheels, a handlebar, a seat, and that’s Indie.”

It’s obviously an exaggeration, but only just.

To preserve every possible litre, the team developed a two-piece construction that could snake its way around the scooter’s architecture without compromising strength. It sounds like a small engineering decision but it took months of designing and development engineering to make it work.

Even after the Indie Gen 1 was out on the road, the work didn’t stop. The scooter kept evolving. 

When the Indie moved from a belt drive to a gearbox, it unexpectedly opened up another opportunity to rethink the storage packaging.

“The aesthetics and the look remain the same,” Vaibhav says. “But internally there were quite a lot of enhancements. Switching to the gearbox actually helped us clean up the area beneath the underseat storage and make better use of the space.” Meaning, even though the overall volume stayed the same, the storage’s internal shape was refined. 

A small protrusion in the storage disappeared, and a few tight corners became easier to use. The kind of improvements most people would never notice on a specification sheet, but would appreciate every time they packed one more thing into the scooter.

That’s perhaps what makes Indie’s storage interesting, very little of the work behind it is immediately visible. A user just lifts the seat and fits everything in—exactly how the ID team wanted.

What space makes possible 

Sajesh, a customer from Kochi, Kerala, says he mostly uses his storage for groceries and everyday errands. Yet, he recommends the scooter to every shopkeeper he meets because he knows they’ll get even more use out of it than he does.

The ID team never reached the original 50 litres target, but they achieved its usability in 43 litres. Today, Indie owners rarely tell River they love the underseat storage because it is 43 litres.

They tell stories.

About carrying long-stem flowers or banana leaves that don’t have to be bent.

About safely rushing thirty boxes of hot biriyani across the city.

About packing sound recording gear without fearing its damage.

About fitting everything they need to keep their hustle going all day long. 

The least the ID team could do was fit two helmets.

Everything else simply found its way in.

This is one of the most frequently asked questions our sales and retail teams answer on a daily basis. When they respond with a proud no, the reactions are a mix of surprise, puzzlement, curiosity, and even shock at times. Once they hear the reasoning, the initial confusion turns into heads nodding in agreement.

Let me explain the reason with a backstory of River’s early days.

When Vipin put together the Industrial Design team in 2021, he chose people with a genuine drive over corporate experience. He looked for those who longed to build a truly different kind of vehicle, but lacked the platform and resources to do it. These were creators who had already proved their mettle in competitions like BAJA SAEINDIA and Formula Bharat. That same spirit is what encouraged them to take the plunge with River.

Don’t always abide by industry norms—was the unofficial team motto. “This, coupled with wanting to build a vehicle we were proud to sell while keeping costs in mind, led us to think out-of-the-box,” says Ranjan Nair. He’s part of the first hires made by Vipin. Ranjan began as an Engineering Trainee and is now a Lead Engineer with the Vehicle Architecture team. Quite a leap in just 5 years.

“We had better clarity on what we didn’t want when developing the Indie. Because we had a shared ideology, it was easier to rule out ideas.” Vaibhav chips in. He too has been with River since the start, and is now one of the key decision-makers for product design development. 

So what was unanimously ruled out?

No GPS navigation.

No LCD screen.

No touchscreen.

No bloated features. 

Why? Because Indie didn’t need these features. 

Most vehicles today cater to a user’s wants but the Indie focuses on the user’s real-life needs. That meant making the whole user experience seamless, and not just the ride itself. Vaibhav points to the decision to skip a touchscreen as a prime example: “Our users have multiple tasks to do throughout the day. So we had to chalk out how not to complicate their lives by adding another step to their routine.”

Instead of forcing riders to memorise passcodes or wait for boot-up screens, the team leaned into pure muscle memory: a physical key. A key just works. You plug it, turn it, and ride—no dead displays, no software glitches, definitely no extra mental pressure. 

The same pragmatic logic applied to navigation. The team recognised that the Indie would mostly run on familiar city roads. Petrol scooters cover far greater distances without built-in navigation screens, and riders manage just fine. So why add the cost and distraction of a screen? For daily city runs, built-in GPS navigation was clearly a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have feature.

The team’s focus around daily familiarity didn't stop at digital features. It shaped how the vehicle was engineered too. “We didn’t limit ourselves to existing EVs, and benchmarked IC engine two-wheelers as well,” Ranjan explains. “We wanted to understand what was familiar to our customers and deliver that exact feeling the moment they twist the throttle or hit the brakes. That’s also how we went on to develop adaptive regenerative braking.”

On a petrol scooter, engine braking lets you hold steady speeds or slow down smoothly without constantly grabbing the brakes. Electric scooters lack this ability. Their instant power can cause the vehicle to climb to high speeds with even a slight throttle, forcing constant corrections. Moreover, most electric scooters require letting go of the throttle completely just to trigger regenerative braking.

River fixed this by studying how petrol engines maintain control. The team designed a system that activates regenerative braking while your hand stays on the throttle. Ease off the throttle slows the vehicle down smoothly. Roll back a little provides gentle braking, while rolling back even more delivers stronger stopping power. The entire twist grip becomes usable, giving riders a natural, effortless feel while recharging the battery in the background.

When adaptive regenerative braking was introduced in the Indie Gen 1, River became the first company in the electric vehicle industry to offer this in a two-wheeler. 

By now, it’s easy to see a pattern of how River doesn’t do conventional things or clichés. We follow no bandwagon. Every choice we make comes back to what actually serves the user in daily life. We skip what we feel is unnecessary not to make a statement, but to build something simple, dependable, and genuinely useful. 

Now, imagine another chair. It also has the same standard structure with four legs, but with some key differences. This one matches your height perfectly; you only need to bend your knees, and your bottom meets a lovely, puffy cushion. The backrest is perfect, and it even includes neck support.

Which one would you choose to sit on to watch a three-hour-long film? The latter, of course, unless you want to squirm in your seat throughout the movie.

Even though the basic structures of these two chairs are essentially the same, the key factors that differ in the second chair—the perfect seat height, the lovely cushion, and the backrest—considerably change how we approach them. These little game-changing factors are what make the second chair ergonomic.

What is ergonomics?

Derived from the Greek words ergon (work) and nomoi (natural laws), ergonomics is the science of designing environments, products, and systems to fit the people who use them. Instead of forcing the human body to adapt to a poorly designed object (like stretching to fit into a giant, awkward chair), ergonomics focuses on human capabilities. It studies our limitations and proportions to ensure that tools and spaces support our natural posture and movement.

It’s a concept you already encounter every day. The rubber handle on a steel ladle that protects your hand while you stir a bubbling pot of curry, or the wheels on a heavy suitcase that save your spine from bearing the load, etc., are all examples of ergonomics at play.

A similar philosophy applies to scooter usage. But with changing riding habits, what is the scope for improving its ergonomics? More importantly, how do you make a scooter intended for daily heavy-duty use, ergonomic?

In the world of two-wheelers, ergonomics is defined by the rider's primary points of contact with the scooter. This relationship is determined by a concept known as the ergonomic triangle, or more popularly, the rider’s triangle.

The ergonomic triangle

The ergonomic triangle is the real-life application of basic geometry. The relationship between your seat, your handlebars, and your floorboard forms the ergonomic triangle. While a geometric triangle on paper is static, real-world riding is dynamic. Every single component around the triangle has to be meticulously calibrated to expand, protect, and optimise these three primary points of contact for the scooter to be more flexible and accommodating.

Get this wrong, and you're hunched, strained, and counting down the minutes until you can get off the vehicle. Get it right, and you barely notice you're riding at all. Indie gets it right. The three touchpoints are fine-tuned so your back sits naturally upright, your arms reach the handlebar without stretching, and your feet properly rest without your knees climbing up to your chest.

Here is how the three focus-points of Indie’s ergonomic triangle are tailored to work together.

The seat

The seat is the foundation of the ergonomic triangle, dictating your hip placement and posture. Ride comfort is directly proportional to the quality of your seat; if it is too small, both you and your pillion will quickly grow to resent the journey.

Indie’s seat is long, wide, and exceptionally accommodating. It's padded well enough that you do not even think about it. Whether you're riding solo or with a pillion, there’s space on the seat. Nobody has to perch nervously on the edge, holding on for dear life.

Another key factor on the Indie is the seat placement: the H-point (where your hips sit) is a little farther back compared to most conventional scooters. This design choice is a gamechanger for taller riders. Because you sit further back, your long legs don’t have to fight for space, you don't have to stretch your arms too much, and neither do your knees scrape against the glove box panel when turning the handlebar.

The handlebar

Taking a sharp turn is where a lot of scooters betray you—the handlebar swings around and suddenly your knee and the bar are getting uncomfortably acquainted. When the riding triangle is too small, steering costs you comfort. Indie's handlebar is designed so that even at full lock, there's plenty of clearance between your knees and the bar. Your knees stay unbothered, and you stay focused on the road rather than bracing for that irksome contact.

The floorbed and the front foot-pegs

One of the first things you notice when you step onto Indie is how much space there is around your feet. The 20-inch floorbed is generous and gives you the freedom to shift your stance, move your feet, and simply sit as you like.

This space not only directly impacts your comfort, but also is a utility bonus. If the massive floorbed is loaded up with cargo, or if a taller rider simply wants to change their posture, they can throw their feet onto the front foot-pegs.

The front foot-pegs are a hit among Indie users, and anyone who test rides the vehicle. It is the ultimate proof that the ergonomic triangle can be even more flexible. By moving your feet forward, you instantly shift the traditional rider’s triangle into a relaxed, “cruiser-style” riding position. It ensures your knees never feel cramped.

Beyond the triangle

Even though the glove box panel isn’t technically a part of Indie’s rider’s triangle, it drastically influences how you experience it. Finding the perfect riding posture only works if the machine actually accommodates your body's natural movement. On a standard scooter, the glove box sits parallel to your knees. This means every sharp turn or sudden bump risks an uncomfortable collision.

We refused to let a rigid structure dictate your comfort. Instead of a boxy obstacle, Indie’s glove panel is specifically rounded, angled, and set back just enough to create crucial legroom. And we didn't compromise on utility to get there; the glove box still boasts a massive 12 liters of storage.

This design choice ensures there is absolutely zero friction if the 20-inch floorbed is fully loaded with cargo, or if you're leaning back using the front foot-pegs. And when you consider the stability-boosting 14-inch wheels, or an optional backrest accessory, every element works in harmony to deliver a flawless riding experience.

For a heavy-duty scooter built to endure the punishing demands of the daily grind, brilliant ergonomics prevent physical fatigue before it even starts. This becomes an invisible problem-solving tool for any rider. By carefully shaping every panel, peg, and touchpoint of the rider’s triangle to natural human geometry, Indie offers effortless support so you can focus entirely on the road ahead. Because at the end of the day, Indie is built for real riders, with real habits, tackling real roads.

When Aravind and Vipin took the leap to build River, the earliest concepts focused on the physical product—the ‘feel’, the structural frame and the engineering parameters. As the team spent more time understanding the real world our vehicles would occupy, we were better equipped to incorporate design solutions from the customer’s perspective. But what really got the team to embrace this design-centric approach happened before River was even conceptualised—the scooter sketch. 

Like any good designer with a strong desire to solve a problem, Vipin spent much of his leisure time sketching a different two-wheeler. Several factors influenced how this vehicle took shape; his instincts about a vehicle's full capability and his father’s rubber plantation operations. He also observed the public’s frustration with vehicles that only handled commuting, as well as the quick fatigue faced by tall riders. Iteration by iteration, month by month, Vipin sketched a functional tool that fit right into a rider's daily life. 

That holy-grail-of-a-sketch is what convinced both our co-founders to make River a product-first company.

This decision has inspired our teams to treat design as a solution to a problem, not just cosmetics. It is now an active, cross-company discipline. We emphasise functional design over automotive jargon. This means that the vehicle is built from the ground up to serve a purpose, making its underlying intelligence entirely visible to the person using it.

By the time the Indie was ready for launch, Vipin wanted it to be viewed as someone’s favorite pair of shoes:

“Think of your favourite shoes. Comfortable, reliable, always ready to go. That’s how we design our products: a natural extension of you, just like your shoes. It adapts to your needs, taking you wherever life takes you.”

After all, don't successful design principles always start with a focus on people?

Knowing what not to build

To build a vehicle that feels so intuitive, one has to understand the boundaries between art, design, and decoration. A cosmetic approach isn't true design; it is just decoration. Vipin doubles down on this opinion: “Our designs should have two aspects: solve something functional, and connect emotionally with the customer we are providing solutions to.”

The R&D team applies design thinking as the foundational ‘brain’ for all activities. It’s a simple but rigorous process: identifying a problem or opportunity, breaking it down, finding a solution, testing it with customers, and then moving to production. This process actively shapes both our engineering and manufacturing phases.

In the engineering phase, the design thinking process translates into ‘design engineering’—a common term treated differently at River. Rather than just focusing on industrial aesthetics, the engineering team actively breaks down the core functional problems. Vipin explains how: “With the Indie, we decided through a ‘game of elimination’ to focus on everyday utility rather than vanity metrics. That’s how the goal of building the fastest motor was eliminated. Instead, the team focused heavily on load-carrying capacity. By applying design thinking to these engineering constraints, they created a highly durable chassis that's rarely seen in the conventional everyday scooter.”

As the process moves toward manufacturing, the design thinking approach continues to guide vehicle development. The team transitions from initial sketches to physical prototypes by generating comprehensive engineering data and testing the vehicle through real-time simulations. At this stage, the design process is extended to vendors and manufacturing partners, where both teams work directly to create parts and moulds for full-scale vehicle development. For instance, the Indie’s busbars alone—a joint effort with a vendor—took almost 12 months of R&D to perfect. Finding a ‘workaround’ was never an option for either team. The busbars simply had to be indestructible against the reality of Indian roads, and function reliably for years. But take a closer look here; design thinking did more than just perfect the busbars. It also enabled us to partner with vendors who share our principles. 

River uses design thinking as a filter across disciplines. This ensures our engineering and manufacturing efforts result in an honest and unpretentious product. It makes it easier to identify, and collaborate with business partners who believe in achieving customer satisfaction through good design solutions. 

So why is good design such a big deal for us? Because we use it as a yardstick for success; when there’s no longer a gap between what a product does and why it exists. Seeing how the Indie fits into our customers’ daily routine so smoothly, how they stop thinking about the machine and simply enjoy its capabilities, we know that design has done its job.

This sounds simple and straightforward enough. 

Now what if we try going from A to B in an Indian city at 8:47 in the morning? When the roads are full of school buses, delivery riders, office commuters, a very determined vegetable vendor with his cart, and a lovable brown puppy who has decided that the middle of the road is the best place to contemplate life. Suddenly A to B isn’t so simple. 

Let’s look at Gopalan, the local milkman. Disclaimer: this is a made up name. But the scenario is very much real.

Gopalan’s scooter carries big milk cans stacked in improbable ways that suggest a deep faith in gravity behaving itself. He does the same loop every day. Same roads. Same corners. Same chai stall that’s already open when the sun comes up. 

Same old routine. 

But if, one day his vehicle decides, halfway through the route, that today is the day it feels slightly different: slightly weaker, slightly slower, slightly unsure of itself, his whole morning starts to crumble. Why am I thinking about Gopalan and his commute, and his scooter balancing steel tins while defying the odds of physics?

This, as it turns out, is the sort of thing engineers think about. But I am not an engineer. Not even close. I am just penning down a rather interesting conversation I happened to have with my colleague-friend-River’s in-house-snack-enthusiast Mazher Ali Baig Mirza. Or simply, Mirza. Mirza is also River’s lead engineer and original mastermind behind this thought. On a particularly grey day at work, I decided to pick his brains about the topic.

And his thinking doesn’t start with the scooter.

It starts with the rider.

Think like a rider

“What does their day actually look like?” he asks as he munches on a ribbed masala chip at my desk. 

“Uhm whose day”? 

“The rider’s” he answers. I stare at him blankly. 

“What do you think they carry on a daily basis?” he probes again. “Aah” I exclaimed, mildly understanding what he meant. And so it begins. Our little brainstorm.

What does a rider carry on their scooter in India? Lets see:

A 19 year old might be carrying a cricket kit, a backpack that was theoretically meant for textbooks, and a friend on the back seat giving directions that are mostly wrong.

A 27 year old might be using the same scooter to get to work, pick up groceries, swing by the local cafe to meet her date, and make it home before dinner gets polished off by her flatmates. A 34 year old might be stacking it up with boxes of freshly prepared jams for a farmers’ market, a laundry bag full of creased clothes, a display blackboard and a foldable table. 

The point is, a scooter in India doesn’t just move people. It moves lives around.

Is the old cliche true?

There’s something engineers care about deeply but rarely explain in human language: consistency. Not speed, mind you.

Consistency. 

“Consistency is everything” says Mirza. Was he giving me advice? But I didn't disagree. I went on to ask him what it means when it’s about building a vehicle. 

He thought about it for a moment. This is a paraphrased version of his answer: 

On a standard electric scooter, performance quietly fades as the battery drains. The throttle response at 80% charge feels different from the one at 30%. Different again at 15%. The rider adapts, unconsciously, recalibrating their confidence with every dropping percentage point. Let’s go back to Gopalan again. He doesn't know what State of Charge or SOC means. (Neither did I). What he knows is that around the time he is passing through the final bit of his daily route, his scooter starts to feel slower and more reluctant. This is what engineers describe as performance degradation. What Mirza and his team were after was something different: a vehicle that feels exactly the same at the end of the battery as it did at the beginning. This required rethinking the engine and battery entirely. These needed to stop being two separate things and start being one system that maintains itself throughout the journey. Full power, full response, right until the last leg of the route. No fading. No hesitation. 

But consistency alone isn't the whole story either. India's roads are not the easiest to navigate. They offer slopes, surprise potholes, sudden braking, gravel patches, and sweet yet stubborn dogs who own the streets. A scooter loaded with canisters or groceries or a cricket kit or a carry-on suitcase needs to stay balanced when it hits a bump. It needs to be stable in its steering when fully loaded.

These are the things that quietly drain a rider. Not the big moments, but the thousand small corrections you make without thinking. By the time you reach B from point A, you're more tired than the distance even deserved. The goal, as Mirza put it, is a vehicle that reduces this tiredness. One that handles the road so the rider doesn't have to think about handling the road. Ha!

This is where Indie comes in. (Did you really think I wouldn't mention the Indie?)

Meet your space maker

Consider the idea of loading things onto the two-wheeler.

A scooter carrying real weight behaves differently from one carrying none. Any rider knows this in their body even if they couldn't explain it technically. The steering gets heavier. Or worse still, lighter in ways that feel unreliable and wonky.

River’s engineering answer to this is something called the Riverbed platform.

Here's the simplest way to think about it. Imagine a Jenga tower. The higher you build it, the more unstable it becomes. Technically fine, until something disturbs it. Now imagine taking those same blocks and arranging them into a wide, low structure. The weight is the same, but the centre of gravity is lower, making it stable by nature.

That's the Riverbed.

The weight rests at the bottom. The vehicle isn't fighting to stay upright when you load it. It simply stays put. The mechanics of balance. What it also means is this: on a conventional scooter, because the mechanical components are bulky and sit higher up inside the frame, the space available for carrying things is limited and awkward. The floorboard has a hump in the middle where the engine sits. Storage compartments are carved around whatever space is left over after the mechanics have taken their share. 

However, in the case of Indie, the mechanical bulkiness is no longer competing for the same space as your cargo. The floorbed becomes fully flat. The area where you'd stack things is now simply open. Which means more space. When Mirza talks about maximising storage, he doesn't mean adding just a bigger boot at the back. He means the entire structure of the vehicle has been arranged so that carrying things is not just an afterthought. Moreover, the vehicle doesn't dictate what it can carry. The rider decides. More capacity, more agency.

Predictability is cool. Predictability is hot.

Nobody wants to be called predictable at a party. But in the context of a vehicle that someone depends on for their livelihood? It is, in fact, the highest form of trust. And at the risk of this sounding like unsolicited dating advice, stable is the best choice. I should take my own advice.

In the two-wheeler world, here's how Mirza would explain predictability. If Gopalan's scooter tells him he has 43 km of range left, it needs to have 43 km left. Not approximately but accurately. Around those 43 km is what is holding the rest of his morning together.

Now imagine his scooter's range display is slightly off. It says 50 km, but it means 45 km. A 5 km variance doesn't sound like much. But it is the exact difference between Gopalan completing his deliveries and being stranded on the roadside with three full cans of milk, no customers, and a dead scooter. So, he stops trusting the number.

For anyone using a scooter for their livelihood, range isn't just a number on a screen it's how they plan their day.

In the beginning, when Mirza asked me to think about the rider, it was simply to reiterate that the thinking behind River Indie didn't start with the motor or the battery. It started with the rider, and what their day actually looks like. Indie was built to be capable, and consistent, and stable, and predictable. A vehicle that is just not a sum of its separate features, but a seamless feeling. The feeling that the vehicle is working with you. A feeling of blissful joy.

If we look beyond our immediate circle, we’re likely to notice jugaad everywhere—across Indian homes and streets. Things rarely have just one life. A jar becomes storage. An old shirt becomes a cleaning cloth. A wooden plank becomes extra space on a scooter. Nothing is too small to be useful again.

Being resourceful in India is driven by a number of reasons; scarcity of resources, a frugal lifestyle, an innovative spirit, the desire to fulfil a purpose… For our Co-founder, Vipin, his father’s resourceful nature heavily influenced how he envisioned Indie’s utilitarian nature. “My father was a teacher and a part-time farmer, and like many others, he managed his day on a two-wheeler. When he had to carry bulky rubber sheets, placing them on the floorboard left no room for his feet. So he fixed a simple wooden plank underneath the sheets to extend the floor board,” Vipin says with a proud smile—a gesture that continues to hold respect and awe; “he didn’t change the scooter, he simply made room in the most unexpected yet simple way. It’s a small addition that allowed the scooter to carry more without losing its balance.”

“This innovative solution stayed with me through the years, and later came into effect while I was sketching the Indie. That’s how the front foot-pegs were born—a simple design solution that solves real problems riders face everyday.” 

And that’s exactly what our riders say about the front foot-pegs. “The stretched-out riding position is a boon, especially for tall riders. At an average height, I find it just adequate and comfortable. However, taller friends of mine swear the riding triangle suits them superbly. The front foot-pegs make all the difference. I can't believe no other manufacturer had thought of the idea previously.” (Team BHPian: Raskolnikov.R, Bengaluru)

Conventional scooters often followed a one-size-fits-all approach, but we wanted the Indie to factor every possible way a scooter could be used. Once Vipin sketched out the first blueprint, our R&D team, being riders themselves, spent hours on the road observing and talking to daily two-wheeler riders. The Indie had to be a versatile companion for one’s day-to-day journeys. If you test ride the Indie, you’ll notice every detail was designed to ease the daily grind—the spacious seating, the immense storage, the ruggedness for all kinds of roads. All this from a simple thought—how can the humble Indian two-wheeler reach its full potential! Not by replacing what it was, but by extending what it can be–more roles, more everyday usefulness. So what began as a way to carry rubber sheets on a scooter, has quietly turned into a utility-comfort feature with the front foot-pegs.

In many ways, that’s how most good ideas in India begin. Not on a drawing board but in the middle of a regular day. Someone trying to carry a little more. Someone adjusting, fixing, adding one small thing to make life easier. And to extend the lifetime of what’s already owned. When you care for what you have, you start seeing what else it can be. That’s how ordinary objects stick around longer than expected. 

Most of the time, no one calls this innovation. It’s just common sense, or how we Indians love to call it, “jugaad”—just making things work. But look closer, and you’ll see that these “fixes” travel. One person’s workaround becomes another person’s eureka moment. A solution at home finds its way onto the road. A small adjustment made years ago quietly turns into better design for someone else. 

‘Jugaad’ is simply that instinct to try, to reuse, to extend, to not give up on what’s already there and see how much more it can offer. And sometimes, that’s all it takes to turn the simplest thing into something that lasts.

Try it on something ordinary. Like describing a tiger. Option 1. Long-whiskered wild cat; predator and lives in a dense forest. Option 2. Jungle cat; orange; black stripes; Sher Khan; will not cuddle.

Abstraction picks the second. It offers clarity. The first could have been a lioness, a panther or a rebellious housecat that has gone off to find its soulmate in the woods. Abstraction thinks in complexity and expresses in simplicity. Good design does the same. Good writing too. It edits. It chooses. It spares.

I am not a designer but I do watch from the sidelines. And from this vantage point, I have observed that the finest things travel far because they’re edited; not because they’re louder. In a world optimised for more, the brave choice is often less. 

Anyone can add. Addition is easy. And it may or may not be accompanied by sense. I can make a cat wear a hat and call it progressive thinking. Does it make sense to everyone? To most, probably not. Also, poor cat. 

Subtraction is innovation. Subtraction takes spine. The cleanest apps and objects feel confident because they originally left things out. Like a pencil. It writes and erases. Beautiful. A timeless classic that continues to perform its part. Any other ornament on a pencil is just that— an ornament. When you take it off, the pencil remains. 

And then there’s essence. What about essence? What about it? It’s the spirit of something that is hard to find and harder to keep. What if subtraction removes this very soul of a thing? Subtraction and essence get along just fine, I assure you.

How? You ask. Well, subtraction isn’t necessarily erasure. It simply gets rid of the fluff. Like a sieve. What is left is pure essence. And essence stays quiet. Think of it like an MTV Unplugged performance. If one removes the noise, a song truly reveals itself. I got that from Rick Rubin so it isn’t exactly original. But if you look at Clapton’s acoustic version of Layla, you can see how the song— stripped of other instruments, survives. It thrives even. Abstraction at its best. 

If abstraction is applied to most things, it might be possible to find unusual delight. And what is often brought to the surface along with essence, is purpose. The coolest things are those that you don’t notice until you need them. Like a sewing needle. You can walk around with a chic hole in your trousers and wait for it to grow. Or fish a needle and thread from a biscuit tin and be respectable in a few minutes. The point is, good design disappears. Abstraction sees that. Another idea stolen from Dieter Rams. Purpose is embedded in this tiny needle. It is blended in it so seamlessly that it hides until things go wrong. Then it appears quickly to fix the fabric and slips back into the tin, to be ignored again but never forgotten. Yet it dutifully serves its purpose. Abstraction in action.  So, if this were to be made into a formula, here’s what it might look like:

Subtraction × Abstraction = Essence + Purpose = Enough.

A mathematician might flinch while reading this but I hope it summarises this thread neatly. An abstract about abstraction. 

Look, abstraction costs. It takes work to be simple and clear. Like most things and processes, it begins with a jumble of squiggles and ends up with a tidy line. The chaos is a part of the journey. Perhaps it serves as a reminder to do the honest bit first and focus on what matters most. Perhaps less than is greater than. 

When we met Ishwarya at the River Factory, it became clear that for most people playing against the odds, they don’t see it as hustling. They’re just giving it their everything. Hustling becomes so ingrained in their lives that they become epitomes of the word. Meet with Ishwarya today, and you’ll be talking with the Zone Leader of the Vehicle Assembly division. She rose to the ranks quickly. And deservingly so. Spend a day with her and you’ll realise this: the level of competence others call extraordinary is simply her everyday standard. 

“Growing up in Chitradurga, Karnataka, I was raised by parents who taught me the value of working hard and being independent. My father, an auto driver, always encouraged me and my sister to focus on our studies. He wanted us to build our own lives, despite the pressures society placed on us, especially when it came to marriage.

When I joined River, I started as a technician, and within just six months, I was promoted to Zone Leader. Today, I lead a team of 40 people. My journey hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learned that when I set my mind to something, I don’t stop until I achieve it.” Ishwarya.

Working in the same assembly line is Ayub Ali, who shares the same grit as Ishwarya. “When I was 16, I hit a major setback. I failed five out of six subjects in my grade 10 exams. For most people, that would’ve been the end of the road. At that age, failure is a big deal. But for me, it was a wake-up call. I found a biography of APJ Abdul Kalam, and it completely shifted my mindset. I saw how he kept going, no matter what, and I remember thinking: ‘Failure isn’t the end—it’s just part of the journey.’ I retook my exams and passed everything. That moment was a turning point. I realised success isn’t about talent or luck—it’s about how you push through when everything feels stacked against you.”

Ayub now works as a technician at River Factory. “What I do here matters, I always say. It’s a place where I can learn, grow, and constantly challenge myself.” Outside of work, he’s passionate about rap. It’s how he processes everything; his thoughts, growth, and his journey. And when he needs a break from words, he goes fishing—a hobby passed down by his father. Besides the calming waters, it teaches him patience and how to stay grounded.” 

Ishwarya and Ayub may come from different places and carry different stories, but what connects them is simple, their grit. They don’t call it hustle. Here at River, their journeys remind us that progress isn’t always loud or dramatic. For some, it’s built quietly on factory floors, in long days, in second chances, and in the belief that effort always counts. And that, in its truest form, is what hustle really looks like.

Binesh’s journey to River was anything but conventional. His background is eclectic—a mix of fashion, art, travel, and plenty of life lessons learned on the go. “I started in fashion, but that’s a long story,” he laughs as if to say there’s too much to fit into a single conversation.

From his early days as a delinquent teenager kicked out of multiple schools to living on the streets of Paris in his 20s, his life has been a series of unexpected turns. He’s worked in pizzerias, cafes, and even with Alexander McQueen. Along the way, he lived in places like Barcelona and Los Angeles, soaking up new cultures and perspectives, always trying to understand people. “I thought I wanted to be an artist. But that idea faded, and I found myself in the fashion world instead. That was a different life.”

But something about that life didn’t feel complete. While working in Mumbai, in September 2022, Binesh decided it was time for a change. “I needed to do something I’ve never done before,” he says, reflecting on the moment he left Mumbai for Bangalore. “Somehow, Bangalore called out to me. And River happened.” When he joined the company, his title was Senior Merch Manager, a role that seemed to fit given his background, but Binesh’s ability to adapt and grow quickly meant he took on more than just one role. He eventually found his true fit in customer care—a space where he could truly connect with people.

One storey apart, the same openness to trying, learning, and evolving shows up in another story; Jasvir’s.

Jasvir Kaur’s approach to life and work is as vibrant and dynamic as the way she wears her hair—twists, braids, and all. Always smiling, always with a sparkle of energy, she brings a refreshing and bubbly spirit to everything she does. Her colourful jewellery, a signature part of her style, feels like a reflection of her personality: full of life and unapologetically bold. Jasvir’s role at River is just as diverse as her look. Initially joining as an industrial designer, she now works across digital displays, scooter accessories, and human-machine interaction, balancing multiple projects at once with ease. “I’m always juggling things, and I love it,” she says, her enthusiasm infectious.

Her childhood as an army kid—moving from Jammu to Jhansi, and various other places—instilled in her a sense of adaptability and a love for new experiences. “I never stayed in one place long enough to get bored,” she recalls. After studying fashion and accessory design at NIFT Chennai, Jasvir quickly realised that the fashion world wasn’t offering the excitement or challenges she craved. “I loved the creative process, but the outcome didn’t excite me,” she says. So, she shifted gears and found herself immersed in the world of game and toy design, where the process of conceptualising and iterating was everything.

However, it was during the pandemic that Jasvir decided she needed a change. “I was tired of working from home. I wanted to go to a space where I could collaborate and learn,” she says. That’s when River reached out. Though she had no technical design experience, the company’s call for someone multidisciplinary piqued her interest.

“I thought, ‘Why not?’ and decided to dive in,” she says, with characteristic optimism.

In their own ways, both Binesh and Jasvir built paths that were never straight. They tried different things, learned from change, and shaped their roles around what felt right. What brings them together at River is that same instinct to grow, switch lanes when needed, and stay open to new challenges. Versatility is not just part of their personalities. It is what helped them find a place where they could do many things that brought them fulfilment, and still be themselves.

That same versatility lives in River’s design philosophy too. We believe that everyday things should be simple to understand and easy to use, yet ready for many different needs. That belief shapes Indie as well. It works for long commutes, work trips, weekend plans, or anything in between without making the rider change their routine. It fits into life instead of demanding adjustments. For Binesh, that idea feels personal. He has lived a life built on adapting and finding comfort in change, which is why selling Indie comes naturally to him. He sees his own story in the scooter, and that connection is what makes him love talking about it.