BatteryPool Raises Funds From IAN And Others The freshly infused capital will be utilized for scaling up BatteryPool's business development efforts and add new fleet charging products to its portfolio
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Pune-based BatteryPool, which offers battery charging solutions for EV fleets and commercial vehicles, announced to have raised an undisclosed amount of growth capital as part of its Seed funding round. The round was led by IAN and Pune-based Venture Center under the NIDHI-Seed Support Scheme and saw participation from lead investors including Arjun Seth and Harshavardhan Chitale.
Previously, the startup had raised grants from the Department of Science and Technology (GoI) and an angel round along with the 100X.VC investment.
The freshly infused capital will be utilized for scaling up BatteryPool's business development efforts and add new fleet charging products to its portfolio.
"We identified that while EVs made sense commercially, challenges around battery charging can lead to downtime of commercial and fleet electric vehicles. Battery swapping can serve as a viable option to eliminate this downtime. However, existing battery swapping services require fleet operators and drivers to conform to a certain battery standard and this can be expensive and significantly restrict the fleet operations to where these services are being offered. Therefore, we built hardware that is agnostic to the battery type and can be used by fleet operators regardless of the battery standards being used in their fleets. Our key focus is to cater to EV fleet operators and commercial electric vehicles via partnerships with OEMs, and battery pack manufacturers. We appreciate the support of our vision by IAN and marquee investors," said Ashwin Shankar, founder, BatteryPool.
Currently, BatteryPool is solving these challenges via its flagship product - a smart battery-swapping station for fleet and commercial EVs. The swapping station is battery agnostic and software-enabled allowing fleets and commercial EV drivers to swap their batteries and eliminate any downtime caused by charging their vehicles. The startup has some of the largest two- and three-wheeler EV fleets as its customers.
"The EV ecosystem in India is evolving rapidly. The use case of going electric is well-known as running costs for fleet operator's contract. By 2030, the fleet and commercial vehicle charging market size is set to reach $2.7 billion, as these will become electrified. BatteryPool is walking on a path to capture a huge opportunity with India witnessing a rapid shift to electric mobility in the II and III-wheeler segment, which is where EV adoption will see tremendous velocity. We will offer our proprietary software and hardware solutions and embrace a collaborative platform as we build on our partnerships with OEMs and fleet operators," added Arjun Seth, lead investor, IAN.
Recently, BatteryPool has signed large contracts/POs with one of India's largest e-rickshaw fleets. The startup is also planning to introduce Smart Plug-In chargers for fleet/commercial EVs without swappable battery packs soon.
