The small cargo commercial EV segment has a market potential of around 1.3 million units per year: Altigreen

With its Rs 300 crore fundraising in March 2022, the company is pursuing an ambitious network expansion campaign to capitalize on the three-wheeler EV possibility.

Altigreen has already opened 17 retail shops in prominent cities including Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, and Delhi in less than a year. The company's management feels that the traditional dealer model is most suited to serve the majority of the untapped last-mile delivery EV market, having recently built its second showroom in Delhi.

While it currently offers low- and high-deck versions of its small cargo-carrying electric three-wheeler, it plans to introduce a passenger-carrying version on the same platform in the near future to replace conventionally-powered last-mile mobility vehicles commonly seen deployed in rural and semi-urban clusters.

Altigreen predicts that the small cargo-carrying commercial EV segment has a market potential of around 1.3 million units per year. With its Rs 300 crore fundraising in March 2022, it is pursuing an ambitious network expansion campaign to capitalize on the three-wheeler EV possibility.

The company Altigreen was founded in 2013 to manufacture made-in-India electric commercial vehicles. The founder of Altigreen (Dr. Amitabh Saran, Shalendra Gupta, Dr. Lasse Moklegaard, and Dr. John Bangura) pushed their limits to evolve this automotive company to bring innovative solutions for its Indian buyers to provide them with some sustainable three-wheelers that work well on rural as well as urban roads.

Altigreen has committed Rs 80 crore of the newly obtained Rs 300 crore capital in a new 300,000-square-foot manufacturing factory in Karnataka. The new facility, which is scheduled to open in November 2022, has an annual capacity of 55,000 vehicles spread across two shifts.

Altigreen has three assembly lines, although only two are currently operational, with each line contributing approximately 1,500 vehicles per month.

The company, which relies significantly on localisation in terms of technology and supply chain, with over 93% local content in its products built during the previous decade, is bullish on battery prices falling by about 40% over the next five years.

Altigreen currently employs over 100 engineers in its R&D team, and a four-wheeler commercial vehicle is in the works for a CY2024 launch.