Ather Energy, India’s first smart electric scooter startup has raised 205 Cr Series B funding from India’s leading Bike Company Hero Motocorp. The startup will use this funding in engineering and production work for the S340 (Ather’s first e-scooter model) and on ubiquitous charging infrastructure.
The startup has already raises funding from investors like Tiger Global and Sachin and Binny Bansal. But this is the first time Ather Energy investor list includes any automobile veteran.
Ather Energy in a press release said, “Hero understands where the future of vehicles is headed. And this change will be quite a rapid one which will change the landscape of this industry. One cannot sit on the side-lines. One cannot not participate. A company of their size cannot move like a start-up but as Rajat from their team (Hero Motocorp) often says, they can ‘think like a start-up’. And in this case participate in the growth of one.
“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.”
The startup also explained on the questions of Does this change anything? Does it mean change of strategy? Or distribution model? Is this an acquisition?
No. Both Ather and Hero have different approaches and have chartered different paths. But more importantly the industry is just building up and we believe start-ups like ours will lead the change – we need to build a new narrative, a new story. Different from the one that the old world built up so admirably. Competing on parameters that the incumbents do not compete on. This new story deserves a new company.
One thing both of us believe very strongly is in sticking with our respective paths and staying with the vision. We started Ather with a vision to build India’s largest EV company. This investment if anything only helps us accelerate that journey.