Taiwan's Kymco Invests $65 Mn in Gurgaon's EV Startup Twenty Two Motors for 25% Stake

Taiwan-based KYMCO or Kwang Yang Motor Co, Ltd, that manufactures motor scooters, motorcycles, and ATVs for global distribution, has invested whopping $65 million (~ ₹480 crores) in Gurgaon headquartered electric scooter startup Twenty Two Motors for reportedly 25% stake.

With this Kymco has marked it's entry into the Indian market and partnered Twenty Two Motors to compliment objectives and expertise of both the companies.

The partnership will also allow Kymco to bring it's Ionex battery swapping solution, which will be incorporated into the Flow electric scooter currently in sale in India by Twenty Two Motors.

The reworked Flow will launch early next year, priced at ₹ 74,740 (ex-showroom Delhi). Encouragingly, this is the price at which the current fixed-battery Flow is available. Delhi will see the first launch, followed by Bangalore.

Both the companies have also decided to open experience stores by Twenty Two Kymco in the major cities of New Delhi Gurgaon, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore soon afterwards.

Founded in 2016, by Parveen Kharb and Vijay Chandrawat, Twenty Two Motors had raised $1.6 million in its pre-series A round funding led by Mr. Ishwar Singh, CEO, Haryana Industries. Mr. Farhaan Shabbir, former director of Harley-Davidson, in April 2017.

Kymco, which is World's fourth largest electric scooter maker, annually sells about 7 lakh electric scooters globally. The company was founded in 1963 after splitting from Honda. It originally made parts for Honda. The company built its first complete scooter in 1970 and began marketing under the "KYMCO" brand name in 1992.

Besides Kymco, China-based EV company, Sunra, has also entered Indian market and is planning to set up its manufacturing facility in India however it has not invested in any Indian company.

Last December, India's third largest two-wheeler manufacturer, TVS Motors, has bought a 14.78% stake in Ultraviolette, a Bengaluru-based startup working on electric two-wheelers and energy infrastructure.

Prior to that, in October 2016, Hero MotoCorp Ltd had acquired a stake in Ather Enerygy, which is also a electric two-wheeler startup, also backed by Ratan Tata. Hero invested Rs.205 crore in Bengaluru based EV startup Ather Energy.

Source - Economic Times, Overdrive

[Top Image - Parveen Kharb & Vijay Chandrawat, Co-Founders, Twenty Two Motors and Kymco's Chairman, Allen Ko | Image - auto.ndtv.com]

Taiwan's Kymco Invests $65 Mn in Gurgaon's EV Startup Twenty Two Motors for 25% Stake

Taiwan-based KYMCO or Kwang Yang Motor Co, Ltd, that manufactures motor scooters, motorcycles, and ATVs for global distribution, has invested whopping $65 million (~ ₹480 crores) in Gurgaon headquartered electric scooter startup Twenty Two Motors for reportedly 25% stake.

With this Kymco has marked it's entry into the Indian market and partnered Twenty Two Motors to compliment objectives and expertise of both the companies.

The partnership will also allow Kymco to bring it's Ionex battery swapping solution, which will be incorporated into the Flow electric scooter currently in sale in India by Twenty Two Motors.

The reworked Flow will launch early next year, priced at ₹ 74,740 (ex-showroom Delhi). Encouragingly, this is the price at which the current fixed-battery Flow is available. Delhi will see the first launch, followed by Bangalore.

Both the companies have also decided to open experience stores by Twenty Two Kymco in the major cities of New Delhi Gurgaon, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore soon afterwards.

Founded in 2016, by Parveen Kharb and Vijay Chandrawat, Twenty Two Motors had raised $1.6 million in its pre-series A round funding led by Mr. Ishwar Singh, CEO, Haryana Industries. Mr. Farhaan Shabbir, former director of Harley-Davidson, in April 2017.

Kymco, which is World's fourth largest electric scooter maker, annually sells about 7 lakh electric scooters globally. The company was founded in 1963 after splitting from Honda. It originally made parts for Honda. The company built its first complete scooter in 1970 and began marketing under the "KYMCO" brand name in 1992.

Besides Kymco, China-based EV company, Sunra, has also entered Indian market and is planning to set up its manufacturing facility in India however it has not invested in any Indian company.

Last December, India's third largest two-wheeler manufacturer, TVS Motors, has bought a 14.78% stake in Ultraviolette, a Bengaluru-based startup working on electric two-wheelers and energy infrastructure.

Prior to that, in October 2016, Hero MotoCorp Ltd had acquired a stake in Ather Enerygy, which is also a electric two-wheeler startup, also backed by Ratan Tata. Hero invested Rs.205 crore in Bengaluru based EV startup Ather Energy.

Source - Economic Times, Overdrive

[Top Image - Parveen Kharb & Vijay Chandrawat, Co-Founders, Twenty Two Motors and Kymco's Chairman, Allen Ko | Image - auto.ndtv.com]

Twenty Two Motors Raises $1.6M in Pre-Series A Round of Funding

Gurgaon-based Twenty Two Motors Pvt Ltd has raised $1.6 million in its pre-series A round funding led by Mr. Ishwar Singh, CEO, Haryana Industries. Mr. Farhaan Shabbir, former director of Harley-Davidson also joined the investment round to further strengthen his belief in the start-up company he joined as a founding member.

Twenty Two Motors was incorporated in August 2016 by Parveen Kharb & Vijay Chandrawat with the aim of making cutting edge EV technology affordable for the current generation. The Company promises to deliver India’s first truly smart scooter to the masses in Q1, 2018.

“Tremendous work has been done in the prototyping and developing of the highly effective EV since our launch. We have been able to attract the seasoned and quality talent from major Auto companies. Major hurdles of developing Lithium-ion battery, battery management system & smart electronics has also been resolved. This investment is an acknowledgment of our belief that we are working on the product for future generations,” said Parveen Kharb, Co-founder & CEO, Twenty Two Motors.

Lithium Ion battery pack and BMS has been developed taking into consideration Indian temperature profile and thus optimizes performance and battery life. Smart scooter will be fully IOT compliant having devices like GPS, GPRS, Gyroscope, accelerometer etc making it virtually theft proof. Data from these IOT devices is being decoded by servers by using Data mining and Artificial intelligence techniques to precisely determine to ride behavior of the user. A user is always connected to scooter via mobile application which can also be used to control scooter access remotely. Scooter information is available on the cloud and hence all the troubleshooting and other service can be managed automatically.

“Investment will be used meticulously to build and prove the product apart from strengthening startup’s human resource capabilities. Broadly, Investment will be channeled for Prototype vehicle development, Testing, Strengthening Team, Component Development and Factory Setup. Investment certifies our potential and is expected to provide exponential growth to the company,” comments Vijay Chandrawat, Co-founder & COO, Twenty Two Motors.

“We have strategically invested in TTMPL as we could find synergies between both the businesses. Industrial house will gain insights in EV domain while Twenty Two Motors will have increased capabilities to shorten their product development cycle, said Ishwar Singh, CEO, Haryana Group of Industries, a leading automobile component manufacturer across the globe.

Parveen is an automation engineer and automobile insider having 15 years of entrepreneur experience in Automobile domain. He started and is successfully running his two other ventures JMX works and QCD engineering. While Vijay, a computer science graduate from IIT Delhi, has around 14 years work experience in technology, strategy and operations domain. Both forged a real good partnership as one having automobile domain expertise while other having technology expertise. What binds them together is that they both are technology enthusiast and thus taking Electric Vehicles’ challenging road ahead motivated them.