Electric mobility startup Battery Smart has raised $9 million (Rs 75 crore) in a debt funding round led by Stride Ventures. The battery swapping startup is aiming to add more batteries to its network and expand to new cities across the nation.
A company spokesperson declined to comment on the valuation.
The startup raised $25 million (around ₹192.5 crore) in a Series A funding round in June 2022, led by Tiger Global along with participation from existing investors Blume Ventures and Orios Ventures.
The Gurugram-based startup provides an interoperable battery-swapping solution under which depleted batteries are swapped with fully charged ones in two minutes at any swapping station of the company through their proprietary charging infrastructure.
Battery Smart’s product aims to reduce the deterrents to EV adoption such as long charging time, unreliable battery life, range anxiety and high upfront costs.
Launched in June 2020, Battery Smart operates with a unique partner-led model. The model allows the company to use and collaborate with the existing infrastructure of local businesses such as small garages which allows them to set up swap stations quicker than usual.
Founded in 2019 by IIT-Kanpur alumni, Pulkit Khurana and Siddharth Sikka, the company has scaled in the last three years swiftly by completing 6 million battery swaps, setting up 440 live swap stations, and has 13,000 customers across 12 cities.
Stride Ventures has invested in close to 100 companies across sectors like consumer, fintech, logistics, agritech, B2B commerce, healthtech, B2B SaaS, mobility & energy solutions (EV), sanctioning around $400 million across sectors. In August 2022, Stride Ventures announced the final close of its second fund at $200 million exceeding its target corpus.
Its debut fund was launched in 2019 with a corpus of Rs 350 crore and a greenshoe option of additional Rs 150 crore.
The electric mobility space in India has seen no shortage of funding while other sectors are substantially struggling to raise any quantum of funds. Fuelled by government subsidies and a positive change in perception towards EV vehicles, the industry is on the upswing.
Some notable startups that have secured funding in these turbulent times are EV charging network startup Statiq which raised $25.7 million (over ₹200 crore) in a funding round led by Shell Ventures in June 2022. In August, electric two-wheeler maker Ultraviolette raised $10 million from Amsterdam-based Exor Capital. There also has been substantial interest from Western investors for Indian EV startups in the past year.