IIT Madras incubated EV start-up Esmito has raised INR 10 crore in a seed round led by Unicorn India Ventures. The funds raised will be deployed to expand battery swapping solutions and further strengthen the technology team.
Hasan Ali, Co-founder, Esmito, believes that the booming battery swapping market coupled with the company's strength of in-house technology capability can enable Esmito to lead the Energy/ Battery as a Service market.
“Esmito is rightly positioned in a rapidly growing and a fast-evolving EV market. Based on our strengths in building scalable swapping technology, we believe that Esmito can unlock immense value for the end user thereby accelerating the adoption of EVs in the country,' he said.
The start-up provides integrated battery swapping solutions leveraging its IoT-enabled cloud platform. It aims to build multiple use cases in key segments like Logistics & MAAS (Mobility as a Service). The focus is on the two/three-wheeler electric vehicle market in India.
Data Collection, Analysis
Esmito also collects data from all sub-systems and performs data analytics across all the solutions, which it claims can assist in EV asset optimisation, inventory control, charging demand forecasts and driving patterns. The platform also generates reports for charger usage, battery and cell life analytics, vehicle performance, driving behaviour, and user transactions.
Sparsh Kumar, Vice President, Unicorn India Ventures, on investing in the start-up, said, “The EV industry, according to various estimates, is projected to see anywhere between 30-90% CAGR, sustained through this decade and possibly even beyond.'
He added, 'This roughly translates into EV sales overtaking ICE vehicle sales by mid-to-late 2030s with India becoming the third largest EV market. Combined with the fact that this adoption is going to be much faster in the commercial 2W and 3W categories which Esmito aims to serve, we think that there is a lot of potential for rapid value creation in this space.”