India’s Altigreen to enter B2C electric three-wheeler business by year-end

• Bengaluru-based startup has signed 18 dealers across certain cities.
• Its second plant at Bengaluru, to be operational in October, to help boost its production capacity to 4,000 vehicles per month.
• The future of the automobile industry is electric and his company has already laid out a roadmap to achieve faster adoption, CEO says.
• Startup’s focus will be only on the cargo space and not on the passenger mobility vehicles and will be adding more vehicles.
• Plans to expand beyond India and focus on Africa, South Asia and South America next year.

Bengaluru-based last-mile commercial electric transportation company – Altigreen – is set to enter the B2C three-wheeler business through dealers by the end of the year.

“We have already signed 18 dealers and will be based on a city approach. Our second plant at Bengaluru, to be operational in October, will help boost the production capacity to 4,000 vehicles per month,” Amitabh Saran, Founder and CEO of Altigreen Propulsion Labs, told TechChannel News in an exclusive interview.

The startup’s first plant in Bengaluru produces a few hundred vehicles per month, available in 15 cities and eyes 40 cities by end of the year.

Saran said that India manufactures about 1.3 million three-wheelers per year and there is a huge opportunity for electric vehicles and people are willing to convert to electric vehicles because of the financing and subsidy options.

“We are providing financing options, a strong service network and offers a three-year warranty. We expect to have 10,000 Altigreen vehicles on the road by March 2023 from the 400 vehicles on road today,” he said.

The startup had raised Rs300 crore ($40 million) in Series A funding in February this year, led by Sixth Sense Ventures, along with Reliance New Energy, Xponentia Capital, Accurant International and Momentum Venture Capital.

The startup has so far raised Rs350 crore.

Man with a mission

Saran said that the future of the automobile industry is electric and his company has already laid out a roadmap to achieve faster adoption.

When asked whether the company will enter the two-wheeler or passenger car segments, he said that they will be adding more wheels and not subtracting wheels and “our focus will be only in the cargo space and not passenger mobility vehicles.  We see a need for intra-city and regional transport.”

In 2023, he said that he plans to expand beyond India and focus on Africa, South Asia and South America.

Saran’s dream is to make India an EV superpower and he started with one model – neEV – and plans to add more models to its portfolio. It is priced around Rs4 lakhs.

The startup has 26 global patents across 60 counties.

 “My passion was in automobile and environment despite attaining a PhD in computer science, funded by NASA. I worked in the US for some time and returned to India in 1998. I worked for some tech MNCs and started some software startups till 2011. I sold the startups and made some money,” he said.

Saving lives

Even during that time, Saran said that electrification was there but questions came into my mind about why electric vehicle sales were not picking up.

India had Reva Electric Car Company in 1994, which was later acquired by Mahindra Electric Mobility Limited in 2011.

Many people have died due to poor air quality not only in India, he said, but also in emerging markets such as Asia, Africa and South America.

“I looked at why electrification is not picking up in India and the first three years was to understand what the issues were till I started Altigreen in 2013. So, I knew that electrification has to happen to improve air quality and save lives and has to happen on a war footing. The air quality situation in India during that time was very grave,” Saran said.

In 2013, Altigreen started as a technology enabler for electric vehicles, creating electric drivetrain for hybrid conversions.

In 2018, it displayed its first full-electric three-wheeler at AutoExpo, New Delhi, and started delivering the vehicles in 2021.

Pollution led to more than 2.3 million premature deaths in India in 2019, according to a Lancet study.

Nearly 1.6 million deaths were due to air pollution alone, and more than 500,000 were caused by water pollution.

Out of that, Saran said that five per cent is due to road transport pollution and about 4 to 5 lakh people are losing their lives because of the vehicles they are driving.

NASA: A stepping stone

“Due to these factors, I started Aligreen and NASA was a stepping stone and broadened my horizon,” he said.

“What is working in Japan or Germany does not necessarily work in India due to the harsh weather conditions. It has to be built specially for India, from the ground up and should be developed to compete with price and performance against fossil vehicles,” he said.

Moreover, he said that technology should give you freedom, not constrict you.

“Taking all this into consideration, we decided to develop our three-wheeler vehicle, built in-house in Bangalore on a mobility platform that is 93 per cent indigenous,” he said.

Some of Altigreen’s current technologies include electric motors & generators, vehicle controls, motor controls, EV transmissions, telematics, IoT and battery management.

To make fast charging a reality, he said that they have tied up with another startup – Exponent – that rapidly charges from 0-100 per cent in 14.25 minutes at Exponent’s e-pump network.

“Startups never work in isolation; it has to work in an environment. A startup has to challenge the status quo. We have four co-partners and I believe in that. The startup is like a stool and it does not stand on one leg. A stool needs at least three legs to stand,” he said.

Most startups fail not just because of starvation but due to indigestion, he said and added that most startups fail when they try to do too much. 

“It is very important to have a focus and deliver and do it very well. When you start becoming a constraint in that area or not becoming profitable, then start looking at the next.  There is a reason to focus on fundamentals. Sometimes you get distracted because of valuations and valuation should not be a sole driver for a startup,” he said as a piece of advice to young entrepreneurs.

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