 "Ather Energy's electric scooter")
In the latest round of fund-raising, the Bengaluru-based Ather Energy Pvt Ltd, which is developing electric scooters that can give the performance of a fossil fuel vehicle, has raised $ 27 million (about Rs 205 crores) from received Hero MotoCorp Ltd. With this investment, Hero have approximately 26-30 percent shareholding in Ather, which is engaged in the business of designing and manufacturing smart electric vehicles (EV) and associated charging infrastructure.
“As the market leader and a global automotive major, Hero MotoCorp takes the lead in many areas that benefit the environment, customer and the industry. Adoption of environment-friendly fuel is a priority for Hero MotoCorp, as is propagating sustainable manufacturing through green facilities. Hero MotoCorp intends to enhance its participation in the EV space by pursuing its internal EV program in addition to partnering with Ather,” said Hero MotoCorp in a BSE filing today.
“Today, we are happy to announce our latest round of fund-raising. This is what is known in the industry as a 'Series B' round of financing. In this round, we have raised $ 27 million to continue our engineering and production work for the S340 and our efforts with an ubiquitous charging infrastructure. However, what's interesting about this round was that the primary investor in this round was Hero MotoCorp. Yes, the largest 2-wheeler company in the world and one deeply invested in petrol vehicles. This is quite a departure from our previous investors list and in fact this is the first time our investor list includes an automobile veteran,” said Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, co-founders of Ather, in their blog.
In the first round, Ather, established in 2013, had funding from Tiger Global, Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, and V Srinivasan (the co-founder of the Silicon Valley-based big data firm Aerospike).
Electric vehicles market is hotting up in India with many auto companies as well as start-ups foraying into this space as government is also giving a policy push for this sector.
Ather hopes to gain from Hero MotoCorp’s decades of experience in two-wheeler segment, as the company is gearing up to launch its first electric vehicle in the market. “We are a young company. This has allowed us to rethink design, specs, our entire approach even. However, the auto industry is highly evolved in many processes, quality systems and supply-chain management. With Hero as an investor on-board, we hope to fast forward years of learning in those and grow rapidly,” added the Ather co-founders.
