Case Study

Chetan Maini began building toy cars and planes when he was eight. And, with
some nifty workmanship, he has turned his hobby into an innovative xciv business.
He serves as Chief of Technology & Strategy Officer and Deputy Chairman of
Mahindra REVA Electric Vehicle Co Ltd. (alternative name is REVA Electric Car
Company Private Ltd.), a joint venture between Maini Group of Bangalore and AEV
LLC, USA. Mr. Maini has over 14 years experience with electric vehicles during the
course of which he has developed over 6 electric, solar and hybrid-electric vehicles
in India and US. At Stanford, he served as the project leader. In this regard, Chetan
Kumar Maini, the former owner of Reva Electric Cars is a lucky man to have built a
remote-controlled toy car at the age of 8, and won a school prize in the sixth
standard. Later, he started building toy planes and go-carts with a scooter engine.
As a mechanical engineering student, he built solar and hybrid cars. And, finally, he
designed and built a battery-operated car - India's first electric car, the Reva. He
just takes three weeks to put together a model. Today, Maini picks up most of his
ready-to-assemble kits from shops in Bangalore for Rs.6, 000 to 12,000 apiece. His
childhood fascination for cars led him to pursue a mechanical engineering degree
from the University of Michigan. Maini's fascination for hybrid vehicles really took of
during his postgraduate days at Stanford. He spent a lot of time researching green
technologies and companies that were working in that space. "In my college days,
we were four friends who were working on a solar car together. We were always
looking at starting a company, especially in the electric vehicles space," he says.
That is how he ended up working for a company called Amerigon, which was
working on the electric vehicle technology. And that is where the idea of Reva was
born. When Maini introduced Reva in India in 2001, the auto market looked at his
electric car with amusement, some even indulged him by taking test rides, but few
took the car seriously. In late-2006, the company received an investment xcv of $20
million from Draper Fisher Jurveston and Global Environment Fund to help Reva's
strategic growth globally.

Questions

1. Examine the qualities of Chetan Maini as an entrepreneur and their

contribution to his success in business.
2. What, in your opinion, was the turning in Mainis career as an entrepreneur?
3. What can an aspiring woman entrepreneur learn from this case study on
Chetan Maini?