Pune-Based Electric Bike Startup Raises Funding From Ola Founders & Other Angels

Pune-based Electric bike startup Tork Motorcycles has raised angel funding for an undisclosed amount from a host of marquee investors including Ola founders Bhavish Agarwal, Ankit Bhati and a group of angels led by Harpreet Grover, the chief executive and co-founder of CoCubes.

Tork was founded by Kapil Shelke, a mechanical engineer with a passion for racing. Shelke has built five motorcycle prototypes at Tork. "We are building India's first electric motorcycle and are targeting its launch this year. The motorcycle will solve the rider's pain points with several value-added features like GPS, storage, cloud connectivity and phone charging, making it also a first smart motorcycle in India," said Shelke.

[caption id="attachment_105122" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Tork Motorcycle's working prototype of electric bike [/caption]


The startup is in the final stage of prototyping and certification procedures of the country's first electric motorcycle. Named T6X, the motorcycle is being developed as a serious electric option to petrol-engine motorcycles.

T6X will be the first electric motorcycle designed for the market. It will have IP over battery management system, control systems, motor tuning, drive train and overall product integration. The motorcycle will enable significant reduction in overall cost of operation.

Tork's 20-member team is planning to set up a manufacturing unit in Pune and will also be setting up charging units in four locations — Pune, Bengaluru, Gurgaon or Delhi and Chennai. It will build 'Experience Tork' showrooms for customers to have a feel of the motorcycle. The price of T6X is still undecided.



The demand for electric two-wheelers is expected to be around 1.3 mn by 2020-21, according to industry estimates.

Ola Becomes 3rd Most Valuable Startup After Flipkart & Snapdeal

Bengaluru-based Taxi app company Ola has recently raised a funding of $400 million (apprx.Rs 2,500 crore,) from a number of investors.  With this, the 15,600 crore startup has become India’s third-most valuable venture-backed company after Flipkart and Snapdeal. The Taxi app company will invest the newly raised money into expanding into new locations and diversifying into new business areas.  Ola through this move is looking into strengthening its lead in the cab-aggregation market which it had acquired after buying its rival company TaxiForSure in March. The merger now has almost 80 percent share in the cab market.

The company is currently competing with Uber in India.  Although Uber doesn’t have a significant share in the Indian market yet, but being the second most valuable startup in the world valued at $41 billion, it has huge plans for India.

The latest round of funding was joined by New-York based hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital, Singapore’s state investment arm GIC and DST Global along with the company’s existing investors Accel Partners US, Tiger Global, SoftBank group and Steadview Capital.  The company last raised $210 million in October 2014.

"Our growth has been strong and we have a very strong market leadership position, which are key reasons for our investors being so supportive," said Bhavish Aggarwal, founder, Ola in a statement to the Economic Times. Aggarwal has started the firm back in 2011 along with his IIT-Bombay collegemate Ankit Bhati.

According to investor documents accessed by the Economic Times, Aggarwal owned 12 percent in ANI Technologies, the parent company of Ola, and Bhati 5 percent by the end of March.

For Taxi apps in India, the biggest problem is not the market. With the recent Uber rape case in Delhi, Uber and Ola have both been banned in the city and the government hasn’t yet come out with any rules or regulations to govern their services.

According to a statement released by the company on 16^th March, the company will use the raised money to expand its cab aggregation services in about two hundred smaller towns and cities. The company has already expanded to 100 cities in the current year.