River Mobility plans to scale up ops; aims to open 100 stores by March

Bengaluru-headquartered electric vehicle startup River Mobility Pvt Ltd backed by marquee investors Yamaha Motor Corp, Mitsui & Company Ltd, aims to open 100 showrooms by March 2026, a top official said.

The company under its expansion drive inaugurated its first store in Chennai and plans to open 15 more stores by November and 50 stores by March 2025 Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder Aravind Mani said here.

"We are very excited about the Chennai store. We have a lot of people from Tamil Nadu working in our facility (located outside Bengaluru). Chennai is a big EV market. The first store in Chennai is also the company owned operated store." Mani told PTI.

Elaborating about the expansion plans, he said the company would open more retail showrooms in Chennai over the next one year and the second store in Tamil Nadu would come up in Coimbatore.

"That is getting ready and Chennai will have at least four stores in the next one year." he said.

Briefing about the company which commenced operations in March 2021, Mani said his company began selling the "Indie" range of scooters from October 2023 and already sold about 1,500 units. "Last month we sold around 400 vehicles," he said.

"We have around 750 employees. We have raised around Rs 550 crore so far and most of the investors are international and most prominent names are Yamaha (from Japan) which led the last round of fund raise. We have also investments from Toyota Ventures, Mitsui" he said.

The company has a research and development facility in White Field, Bengaluru and about 400 engineers working at the company's assembly factory in Hosekote located on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

Responding to a query, he said the company totally has three stores, two in Bengaluru and one in Hyderabad. The Chennai store is the fourth outlet and second outside Karnataka, he said.

"By November, we will have 15 stores and by March 2025 we will have 50 stores and by March 2026 we will have 100 stores (overall)," he said on the network expansion plans.

The company retails only one product with one variant "Indie" priced at Rs 1.47 lakh in Chennai.

Mani said the company would add one more product to its portfolio and it was expected to be unveiled in early 2026.

On the factory operations, he said the company assembles battery pack at the production facility that has a capacity of around 1 lakh units. About 9,000 units of the scooter "Indie" is produced a month, he said.

River Mobility imports the cells from China and Korea and it accounts for 25 per cent of the vehicle's overall cost.

"Cell cost is actually getting better these days. It is improving. India getting a manufacturing facility for cells will improve the situation further" he said.

To a query as to whether additional fund raise was required, Mani said his company may look for another round of fundraise sometime next year. "We are also looking to put up a new factory and we are looking at expanding the dealerships to around 500 cities." he said, without divulging further details on the capital required to fuel the company's expansion plans.

Mani said the company would open the second company-owned store in Bengaluru next week and another one has been planned to open in September.

"One store is coming up in Indira Nagar 100 feet road and the fourth store (in Bengaluru) is coming up in Rajaji Nagar by September. So there will be four stores in Bengaluru of which two will be company owned and two will be dealer owned" he said.

The company also has plans to expand its footprint in Kochi, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur.