Bharat New-Energy Company (BNC) has announced that it will raise 800 crore rupees this year to fund its plan to relocate to a new location and five times its current production capacity of 100,000 electric vehicles.
Private equity firms will provide funding to the electric two-wheeler startup based in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. It is anticipated that Japan’s Musashi Seimitsu Industry, which acquired an undisclosed stake in BNC in January for an undisclosed amount, will also contribute additional funds.
Bharat New-Energy Company currently only offers one product, “Challenger,” but it intends to offer at least two more products this year.
The company claims that the distinctive “exoskeleton architecture” of its products makes the two-wheeler electric vehicles as robust as 125- or 150-cc motorcycles.
According to Anirudh Ravi Narayanan, the company’s CEO and co-founder, ‘exoskeleton architecture’ exposes the chassis on the outside and houses the components inside—opposite to conventional vehicles.
He went on to say that the chassis was also a “double cradle,” which means that it runs on both sides of the car. The high-tensile steel “allows for more ruggedness” while simultaneously reducing costs and the number of components.
In essence, this architecture gives the appearance of a “motorcycle,” as opposed to the typically small size of most two-wheeled electric vehicles.
In December 2019, Anirudh Narayanan and Vinoth Thiruvenkataswamy launched BNC. Anirudh Narayanan, a former employee of McKinsey, holds a master’s degree in management from Yale and an engineering degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The company’s CTO, Vinoth Thiruvenkataswamy, previously worked for Nissan.
The start-up decided to stop making about a thousand vehicles because it wanted to switch to Chinese-made lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that it designed. BNC plans to resume production this month because the new batteries are now ready.
Additionally, it intends to acquire batteries manufactured in India by “a partner.” The drivetrain for the vehicles will be provided by Musashi.
The SIDCO Industrial Estate in Coimbatore houses Bharat New-Energy Company current facility. The EV startup intends to relocate the manufacturing facility to a different, larger city.
According to Narayanan, the two new products will be 20% cheaper than their ICE counterparts and will be the equivalent of 125 cc and 150 cc ICE motorcycles.
The smaller vehicle’s running cost would be around 20 paise per km, while the larger vehicle’s would be 40 paise per km. The corresponding ICE motorcycle would cost 4 paise per km.
