Electric two-wheeler major builds war-chest to take on rivals; plans to sell over a million units every year
Hero Electric has raised Rs 220 crore in its Series B round of funding led by Gulf Islamic Investments (GII). The first part of the investment—which also saw participation from existing investor OAKS—for the electric two-wheeler maker comes after two-and-a-half years since it raised its maiden funding of Rs 160 crore from Alpha Capital in December 2018.
“Hero aims to sell over one million units every year over the next couple of years,” says Naveen Munjal, managing director of Hero Electric. While noting that the electric vehicles market has undergone tremendous change over the last few years, Munjal underlines that the policies are now extremely conducive for the growth of the segment. “Despite the pandemic, the company is poised to grow at over 2x from the last fiscal,” he says.
Interestingly, the funding comes at a time when rival Ather Energy, backed by the Pawan Munjal-owned Hero MotoCorp, has been aggressively raising capital to beef up its operations. Last November, Ather raised Rs 260 crore in its Series D round led by Sachin Bansal. Hero MotoCorp, which reportedly has over 37 percent stake in the startup, also participated in the round.
Cab aggregator Ola, too, has been bullish about the electric two-wheeler segment. It has announced an investment of Rs 2,400 crore for setting up its electric scooter factory in Tamil Nadu, which is touted to be the world's largest scooter manufacturing facility with an initial annual production capacity of two million units.