Bounce, a three-year-old EV business that caused a stir in the market last Thursday by introducing its first electric scooter for under Rs 45,000 (without battery) and Rs 69,000 (with battery and charger), is looking to become significant in the next year with a $100 million investment corpus.
Bounce’s ambition is lofty since it plans to fight with the major players in this emerging market, Ola Electric and Ather Energy.
Ather is investing Rs 650 crore over the next five years and has announced a second facility, which would increase its annual production capacity from 120,000 units to 400,000 units.
On the other hand, Ola has even bigger plans of investing Rs 2400 crore in due course of time and taking its total capacity to 10 million units per year.
The arrival of Hero MotoCorp later this fiscal year will increase the market’s intensity of competition by a few more ticks.
Vivekananda Hellekere, CEO and co-founder of Bounce, estimates that in 3-4 years, the scooter industry would grow from 2 crores to 4 crore customers, with 90-95% of them being electric. He is not going to pass up this chance, saying, “We will do whatever it takes to build.”
While companies like Ola and Ather have hit the headlines, the market is already crowded, with dozens of startups. These new-age enterprises are brimming with venture capital money, while old two-wheeler behemoths are managing investments in combustion engine technology.
Hellekere commented that while there are many individuals eager to join this burgeoning industry, the availability of finance will determine the term of their survival.
Bounce has already sorted out the investment strategy for the $100 million capital, which will increase its annual production capacity from 180,000 to 700,000 electric scooters.
Furthermore, financing is required to establish a reliable battery switching system for exhaustive sale and usage of all the new products lined up for launch, that includes motorcycles.
The company’s main differentiator is battery swapping, as opposed to Ather, Ola, and the others, which rely on fixed batteries. Swappable batteries offer the advantage of easing consumers’ economic concerns because they may purchase a scooter without a battery for as little as Rs. 45,000, which is significantly cheaper than Ola’s S1 and S1 pro (Rs 85,000-110,000) and Ather 450X (Rs 85,000-110,000). (Rs 1.25 lakh).
Hero Electric and Okinawa, both also provide changeable batteries, however, consumers have to take the battery home for charging as they are not engaged in swapping centres.
In the midst of several financial requests, Bounce is planning another round of fundraising for early next year.
