Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan along with Venk Krishnan, CEO of NuWare and Partner NuVentures, have invested around $1 million in Ampere Vehicles Pvt Ltd, an electric bike making firm. The company will use the money for marketing and creating a good service network. Earlier the firm raised money from ace investor Ratan Tata.
This is the second investment by both Gopalakrishnan and Venk in Ampere. The duo along with Vineet Agarwal, managing director at Transport Corporation of India, and former Wipro executive Sudip Nandy invested $1.2 million in Ampere last year.
In March this year, Gopalakrishnan also backed Bangalore-based online education technology service provider Avagmah and in April, he invested in on-demand task management app MagicX.
Started in 2008, Ampere sells electric vehicles and special purpose vehicles for the differently-abled. It sells products under Angel, Bobo, Prince and V60 brands in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
Recent deals in this space
Last month, electric bike startup Tork raised an angel funding from a group of investors led by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, co-founders of cab aggregator Ola.
Bangalore-based startup Ather Energy Pvt Ltd, secured funding in a Series A round from Tiger Global in May 2015.
Hero Electric, part of the group which also makes Hero Cycles, had entered the market around a decade ago in a joint venture with UK-based e-vehicle tech firm Ultra Motors. It later scrapped its JV and bought Ultra out.