Will Gogoro Viva Electric Scooters Head To India Soon?

On April 21, 2021, Hero MotoCorp and Gogoro announced their partnership across the Indian market. It’s a pretty massive deal, with potentially huge implications for both companies, as well as the markets they serve. Gogoro is a massive force in electric scooters and battery swapping infrastructure in its native Taiwan. Meanwhile, Hero is a massive presence in India, which is also currently the largest two-wheeler market in the world.  

In April, the duo announced that the Gogoro Network would expand battery swapping infrastructure throughout India, which is a big deal on its own. The pair also announced that Hero MotoCorp would be developing electric scooters that use Gogoro’s swappable battery system going forward, which helped slot one of the other puzzle pieces into place for the system to expand. 

In May, 2021, news outlet Rushlane noted that Gogoro had previously filed some trademarks with Intellectual Property India—including one for the Gogoro Viva scooter. A little bit of digging reveals that Gogoro filed trademark applications with IP India for both the Gogoro Network and also Gogoro Viva in 2019. 

Gogoro Viva IP India trademark

Gogoro Network IP India trademark

The trademark application for the Gogoro Network was filed on August 19, 2019, and was officially registered. It is considered valid up through July 5, 2029. Meanwhile, the Gogoro Viva trademark application was filed on November 25, 2019, was registered, and is considered valid up through October 29, 2029. While we know that business deals are in the works for quite some time before we may necessarily hear about them, it’s clear from these trademark applications that Gogoro has been working on its entry into the Indian market for quite some time.  

It’s also interesting to note in light of something else Rushlane points out. While Hero MotoCorp and Hero Electric are loosely related, if Hero MotoCorp was to release its own electric scooters, it would need to do so under a different brand name to avoid confusion with the existing Hero Electric scooter brand, according to that publication. 

Now, OEMs have certainly been known to release the same model under different names for different markets in the past. The idea of a Gogoro Viva scooter coming to the Indian market under a different name wouldn’t be particularly surprising. However, if Hero MotoCorp is trying to avoid confusion with Hero Electric in putting out its own electric scooters, using the Gogoro Viva model name might be a good way to do it. It’s all speculation at this point, though, so we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out. 

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