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Chennai-based Raptee Energy firm to roll out e-bikes this year

January 24, 2022 01:39 am | Updated 01:39 am IST - CHENNAI

The start-up looks to raise $11 million in its next round of funding

City-based Raptee Energy, a start-up that is developing electric motorcycles, will launch its first set of vehicles in the market by July and is also in the process of raising its next round of funding. “We have been testing our prototype on roads for over a year now. The public trials will start later this month. This vehicle will compete against the 250cc and 500cc vehicles,” Dinesh Arjun, CEO and co-founder of Raptee Energy, said. The firm is working on another vehicle, which will scheduled to be out in market in 2024, competing with the 150cc motorcycles.

Raptee Energy was the first start-up to be incubated at the Atal Incubation Centre – Anna University in 2020. Until July 2020, the start-up was completely bootstrapped. The team (Keerthivasan Ravi, co-founder and CTO, Phunith Kumar, COO, and Karthikeyan A., the electronics lead) then raised a pre-seed amount of $700,000 (roughly ₹5.5 crore) from individual angels and firms. They are now looking to raise $11 million (over ₹81 crore) and are in talks with various people. The funds will be used for road and lab testing and for the first batch of motorcycles. Currently, the firm has its research and development happening at Ekkattuthangal and has a small manufacturing unit at the Thirumazhisai SIDCO Industrial Estate, which has the capacity to make over 1,200 units. “This will be a makeshift plant till our second plant goes live,” Mr. Arjun said. Raptee Energy recently inked an memorandum of understanding with the Tamil Nadu Government and is in talks with Guidance, the nodal agency that brings in investments into to the State, to acquire a 36-acre land parcel to set up its second plant.

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When asked how different is this vehicle from others, he said, “We run a 240V system (patented). Others work between the 48-96V systems. This requires a significantly different architecture and requires superior control systems to run. The reason the market is flooded with 48V systems is because of the Chinese influence whose vehicles are significantly different (180-350Watts) from that of our commuter vehicles. This makes our vehicles go faster, longer and never need a replacement of battery in its lifetime.” He added, “This also means we will be the first EV manufacturer who can take advantage of the public charging infrastructure that is already put in place for electric cars.”

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