Ather Energy, a Bengaluru-based electric vehicle startup, announced that it has raised Rs 84 crore fresh funding from Hero MotoCorp.
The EV startup will utilise the funds to boost expansion. It has plans to expand into 20 cities by the end of next year and set up a new manufacturing plant in Hosur, in Tamil Nadu.
The investment will be an extension of Ather’s Series C round in which it raised $51 million in May last year, most of which — $32 million — was pumped in by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, one of the earliest angel investors in the firm.
“We are in a high growth phase of our journey, and while the last few months have been challenging, we have not altered our expansion plans,” said Tarun Mehta, co-founder and CEO at Ather Energy. “…we will be using these funds to invest in our facilities to meet the demand we have seen for the Ather 450X across the country.”
Ather has said it will be able to ramp up manufacturing to 100,000 units annually with the new plant in Hosur, which can further be expanded to 500,000 units when demand improves.
The company, which previously had two models on sale, has now consolidated its portfolio into just one model, the 450X, as it looks to expand its presence beyond Bengaluru and Chennai. Ather is hoping to begin deliveries of its electric scooter in Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi and Mumbai by October this year.
“We are excited to see the growth of Ather Energy in recent years. We see immense potential for them to expand their market even further, especially given the likely growth of electric vehicles (EVs) in the near future. In addition to our efforts of developing a robust external eco-system for EVs, we are also aggressively working on our internal EV program,” said Rajat Bhargava, Head of Emerging Mobility Business Unit (EMBU) at Hero MotoCorp.
Ather Energy is based in Bangalore and was founded in 2013 by Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain.
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