Pune-based electric vehicle (EV) maker Kinetic Green is in talks with private equity investors to raise Rs 250-300 crore in a series-A funding round, as it seeks to penetrate deeper into the growing electric three-wheeler segment.
The funds will be utilised in increasing manufacturing capacity as the company looks to sell more than 2,50,000 units of its electric rickshaws in the next four years, founder and chief executive Sulajja Firodia Motwani said. The funding should be secured within the next two-three months, she added.
“Electric three-wheelers are the low-hanging fruit in electrification,” she said, because they provide better cost economics than their conventional counterparts even today, unlike other categories of EVs.
The company on Monday partnered with state-run oil marketing company Bharat Petroleum Corp to launch swappable battery stations in nine cities, to boost the sales of its electric three-wheelers.
Called e-Drive, the exclusive agreement will allow Kinetic Green to sell its vehicles sans batteries, halving their cost to under Rs 1 lakh, since batteries account for the rest of the cost. BPCL will own the batteries and the charging infrastructure which will be set at fuel stations. Technology for this will be provided by IIT-Madras and the batteries will be manufactured by Amaron.
Users will have to pay only for using the charge on the batteries and then swap them after they are discharged, similar to paying for fuel in conventional vehicles, Motwani said. This will address concerns like range anxiety, high acquisition cost, long charging period and a high battery replacement cost, which are usually associated with EVs, she said.
“We want to attack this Chinese e-rickshaws with our affordable battery swapping models,” she said. If prices become comparable, the higher-quality vehicles made by the organised players will make a better business case for the rickshaw drivers, she added.
The Kinetic-BPCL solution has already been piloted in Kochi and Lucknow and will be expanded to seven more cities in the coming six months, Motwani said.
