Bengaluru, 7th April 2025
Ather Energy Limited, a prominent manufacturer of electric two-wheelers in India, recently hosted the second edition of ByteBattles 2.0. This event gathered technical talent from across the nation to focus on developing firmware to enhance safety in electric two-wheelers while also exploring the practical applications of sensors, microcontrollers, and advanced software solutions.
The 30-hour hackathon, which focused on the Ather Software Development Kit (ASDK) and embedded systems, challenged participants to develop firmware and embedded system solutions to improve vehicle safety for Ather’s Application Programming Interface (API).
The event, held on April 5th and 6th, 2025, at Ather’s corporate office in Bengaluru, was supported by Indian technology industry leaders such as Qualcomm, Elektrobit, NXP, and Infineon. It encouraged engineers to create firmware for a variety of vehicle systems under tight deadlines, including algorithms for motor control, battery protection, regenerative braking, and others.
The competition attracted nearly 179 teams and 722 participants from universities and organizations such as Manipal, IIT-M, NIT Kozhikode, IISC, NIT Warangal, Zoom, Stellantis, Capgemini, Elektrobit, and Nosh Robotics, who competed in a tough online preliminary round.
The 12 teams that advanced to the qualifying round worked tirelessly all night on the firmware development challenge, which required navigating a specially designed track.
The event also included a panel discussion with industry leaders such as Girish Kamala (Senior Director-Automotive, Infineon), Sai Sridhar S (Managing Director, Elektrobit India), Vivek Subramaniam (Industry Solutions Lead for Automotive & Manufacturing, APAC, Google), Rajkumar Anantharaman (Senior Director of Software Engineering, NXP), Sarat Jampani (Director of Product Management, Qualcomm), and Swapnil Jain (CTO, Ather Energy Limited).
The discussion centered on the potential of integrated software and hardware to improve ride safety in India, emphasizing the role of cloud computing in safety testing innovations and the need for a strong software infrastructure. Furthermore, Qualcomm’s Vice President of Engineering, Sathya Ramasamy, delivered a presentation on two-wheeler safety.
Swapnil Jain, Co-founder and CTO of Ather Energy Limited, commented on the second edition of the Hackathon, saying, “The safety of two-wheelers depends equally on software and hardware.”
“ByteBattles 2.0 was designed to bring together engineers and developers to investigate the ASDK and create practical safety solutions. Vehicle firmware poses distinct challenges, particularly in terms of real-time performance, dependability, and efficiency. We believe that hands-on experimentation, testing ideas, and pushing boundaries are the most effective ways to foster innovation, and it was encouraging to see participants do so.”
As a manufacturer of electric two-wheelers, Ather has prioritized the inclusion of safety features in its scooters. To improve model safety, Ather has added features such as multi-mode traction control in the 2025 Ather 450 and SkidControlTM in the Rizta to prevent skidding on low-friction surfaces, FallSafeTM, which disables the motor in the event of a fall, and Emergency Stop Signal, which rapidly flashes the tail lights to alert following drivers during sudden braking. Furthermore, as part of the AtherStack 6 updates, Ather included the Live Location Sharing feature to improve rider safety.
The hackathon offered a prize pool of ₹2,00,000, encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing among automotive software developers.
