Short for Augmented Reality Interactive Vehicle Experience, TVS Motor Company’s ARIVE app, using videos and animations, offers prospective customers in-depth product exploration and purchase experience on a smartphone or a tablet. Among other things, it digitally displays the motorcycle of your choice on the screen, in a very high resolution avatar.
While it currently covers only the Apache series of motorcycles—RR 310, RTR 200 4V, RTR 180, RTR 160 4V and RTR 160—the company will soon bring all models under this platform. Meghashyam Dighole, head, Marketing, Premium Motorcycles, TVS Motor Company, told FE that by the end of this financial year most products will be brought under the ARIVE fold.
Unlike certain carmakers that launched AR apps because customers couldn’t visit dealerships during the lockdown last year, the ARIVE app isn’t a reaction to the lockdown. This initiative, Dighole said, was planned before the pandemic, sometime in 2019. “The aim was to better serve the Apache Owners Group. We realised that even after riding our motorcycles for months, some riders didn’t fully understand all features of a bike—modern motorcycles are very advanced, with hundreds of features—and that’s why we created an app that will help them have a better understanding while sitting at home, office or anywhere,” said Dighole. “It’s a step to improve customer engagement and connect.”
Even though all information on a particular motorcycle is also available on the website, the consumption of such information is usually better when either a person spends time with the physical product or has access to an app that makes the product appear as physical as possible.
The technology partner for this ARIVE app is PTC (formerly Parametric Technology Corporation, an American tech company), with which TVS has had a long association, having used its software in R&D of two-wheelers.
The ARIVE app works only in the landscape mode. Dighole explained that the look and feel of a motorcycle or any two-wheeler is best experienced in the landscape mode—the height of a usual two-wheeler is always shorter than its length.
Available for download on both iOS and Android, TVS will soon start providing tabs at its showrooms that will have the preloaded ARIVE app. “Some customers, in addition to checking out the physical bike, may like to sit and relax and understand more about the bike. We will have tabs in our showrooms on which they can understand detailed features of a bike,” Dighole said.
He added that such experiences (apps) help increase sales. “If, let’s say, you are an enthusiast and you better understand the technology that powers our products, there is a higher chance you would want to own one of these,” Dighole said. “Also, our products regularly undergo technical improvements, and such changes are instantly reflected on this app.”
While the ARIVE app lets a prospective buyer book a test ride and even the bike, in the coming months TVS will integrate loan facility within the app, wherein a person, via the app, will be able to access different financial products and even work out the EMI.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind product in the global two-wheeler space,” Dighole said. “A lot of two-wheeler technologies first entered India via the Apache. It’s natural, then, that technologies that help elevate the two-wheeler buying experience should also enter India via the Apache.”
