Representational photo
| Photo Credit: K. MURALI KUMAR
Mumbai-based Battery as a Service (BaaS) provider VoltUp is looking to raise up to $25 million or ₹200 crore as it looks to expand operations to atleast 30 cities with 500 battery swapping stations in the next financial year.
Currently, the start-up has presence in 10 cities, including Jaipur, Mumbai, Delhi and Lucknow, and 90 swapping stations. Each station has a slot to accommodate 12 batteries.
“We are a bootstrapped firm, and have invested ₹40-45 crore till now, and have raised ₹60 crore via debt,” said co-founder and CEO Siddharth Kabra. “We have now begun the process to raise funds and are looking at about $20-25 million to fund our expansion,” he added.
Mr. Kabra said according to conservative estimates, at least 10 million vehicles with swappable batteries would be sold in the next eight years, resulting in a $7-billion or ₹60,000-crore EV swapping market.
The two-wheeler EV market, he said, was expected to reach about 65 million by 2030, and of this conservatively 15% vehicles were likely to be supported by battery swapping.
In the January-March quarter, the company would also be introducing LFP (lithium iron phosphate battery) chemistry batteries, which are considered safer and long lasting than NMC (lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide) chemistry batteries being used presently.
“The LFP batteries have almost 2,000 cycles of life compared with 800 cycles in NMC chemistry, and will weigh similar to the NMC batteries. The LFP batteries are also thermally more stable with higher operating temperature ranges,” he said.
Mr. Kabra expressed hope that last-mile delivery agents – such as those working with e-commerce websites, food delivery platforms, and hyper-local delivery platforms, would be the ‘torch bearers’ for the electric two wheeler and battery swapping industry. “By FY24, we will see increased adoption by consumers as well,” he said.
