StrideOne Capital Pvt. Ltd on Friday said it has acquired a strategic stake in MoEVing Urban Technologies Ltd, the operator of electric vehicle tech startup MoEVing.
The deal will help StrideOne, the non-banking financial company, set up by the founders of venture debt fund Stride Ventures, enter the last-mile EV financing sector.
The companies did not disclose the deal size.
Besides acquiring MoEVing’s finance tech platform, StrideOne will provide capital for its overall business, as part of the first phase of the deal announced on Friday.
The deal will also help MoEving with rapid fleet electrification and take care of its“capital requirements,” the statement said.
MoEVing’s last-mile data, in turn, will help StrideOne enhance EV underwriting.
“We foresee the potential of Stride deploying ₹1,000 crore in the next 12-18 months towards EV financing,” StrideOne founder Ishpreet Gandhi said.
Mint in September had reported that StrideOne was in talks to acquire MoEVing, which would value the latter at around ₹100-120 crore, to enter last-mile EV financing.
“By combining MoEVing’s data-driven expertise with StrideOne’s financial acumen, we will expedite the adoption of electric vehicles more efficiently. We look forward to deploying 15,000 vehicles over the next 5 years as a result of this collaboration,” said Vikash Mishra, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of MoEVing in the statement.
Founded in January 2021 by Vikash Mishra and Mrgank Jain, MoEVing offers solutions to e-grocery, fast-moving consumer goods, e-commerce, logistics, and direct-to-consumer companies to optimize- their logistics costs and reduce carbon emissions. It also works with original equipment manufacturers, driver-cum-owners, and financial institutions.
The EV finance market in India is estimated to be around ₹3.7 lakh crore in 2030, according to a report by NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute. However, only a few banks and NBFCs offer this service due to the risks associated with the nascent industry.
Captive and non-captive companies like Manappuram, Vedika Credit Capital, Cholamandalam, Greaves Finance, Three Wheels United, Revfin, and Autovertat are some NBFCs that offer EV financing in India. The World Bank and NITI Aayog, in collaboration with the State Bank of India, have set up a ‘first-loss-sharing instrument’ to reduce the cost of EV financing by providing credit guarantees to financial institutions in India.