The deal comes as Grip Invest looks to drive deeper penetration of lease-financing businesses and help companies unlock new revenue streams.
Grip Invest, a digital platform for facilitating new-age investments, announced signing a $2 mn deal with Battery Smart, India’s largest and fastest-growing battery-swapping network for electric vehicles. Through this deal, Grip Invest plans to lease 4,000 batteries for e-rickshaws, enabling Battey Smart to leverage an asset-light business model and save operational costs.
The deal comes as Grip Invest looks to drive deeper penetration of lease-financing businesses and help companies unlock new revenue streams. It will further help Grip to expand their reach in the electric mobility segment and give players an advantage to complete the full asset cycle for electric vehicles deployed.
On the partnership, Vivek Gulati, Co-founder & COO, Grip Invest, said, “Electric auto-rickshaws and E2Ws have emerged as promising segments, accounting for over 4 million units in the next five years. Battery Smart has made significant progress in resolving charging-related challenges for e-rickshaws and electric two-wheelers in India. By introducing asset-light models, Battery Smart can increase commute hours and facilitate greater adoption of e-rickshaws and commercial two-wheelers across urban as well as rural areas.”
Operationalized in June 2020, Battery Smart has built India’s largest network of battery swapping stations for electric two and three-wheelers. It operates 160 live stations across Delhi, Gurgaon, and Noida. The driver can stop at any of the company’s partner swapping stations and get a fully charged battery against a discharged battery in under 2 mins on a subscription basis.
Pulkit Khurana, Co-Founder, Battery Smart, said, “It has been a fantastic journey for us. We recently completed 5 Lac swaps and are witnessing tremendous demand. We’ve grown more than 15X in the past six months and currently service 2000+ electric two and three-wheelers daily. Having Grip onboard will help us scale to five other cities, while continuing to stay asset-light.”
So far, Grip Invest has enabled 15 Indian EV players to unlock the next growth phase. The platform has facilitated leasing of assets worth INR 125+ cr and enabled 60+ companies such as Udaan, Furlenco, Holisol, Loadshare, ChargeZone, Vogo, LetsTransport, FabAlley, BlueTokai, etc. to access a different channel of growth capital.
Apart from this, Grip Invest is also looking to enhance the investment experience by leveraging AI and ML. It recently introduced inventory finance as its second investment product. Moreover, it has also launched an auto-invest feature that allows investors to reinvest the timely returns.
Source: Business World
