Sachin Bansal invests $32 million in EV manufacturer Ather Energy

Sachin Bansal, co-founder of e-commerce platform Flipkart, Tuesday announced investment of $32 million in electric vehicle manufacturer Ather Energy, which has raised $51 million in its latest round of funding.

Ather Energy was one of the earliest startup investments of Bansal, when he invested $500,000 in the firm as an angel investor in 2014.

Since 2014, Bansal has made 18 investments in local, early-stage startups where the deal size was $1-2 million. In 2019, Bansal invested $100 million in Ola Cabs.

Bansal also had investments in Grey Orange, SigTuple, Inshorts, Unacademy and TeamIndus.

Hero MotoCorp has converted its convertible debt of $19 million as a part of this round. In addition to this, InnoVen Capital has extended an $8 million venture debt, Ather Energy said in a statement.

It is now entering an aggressive expansion phase with the opening of pre-orders in Chennai in the coming weeks and, eventually scaling to 30 cities by 2023.

The company is planning a new manufacturing facility which will be designed to produce 1 million vehicles per year.

Ather Energy will also set up 6,500 Ather Grid fast charging points across the country over the next five years with a projected investment of Rs 130 crore.

"Post the successful launch in Bengaluru, we are eager to reach out to consumers in other cities and to build more products that will excite consumers to switch to electric vehicles. The changing landscape of personal transport has also offered us more opportunities and you will hear about the new business models that we are investing in very soon," Ather Energy Co-founder and CEO Tarun Mehta said.