Vidyut launches offline pre-owned EV sales and financing platform | Company News
As the ecosystem around used electric vehicles (EVs) in India is slowly taking shape, Bangalore-based start-up Vidyut, which started as a commercial EV financing platform, is now getting into the used EV sale and financing business for commercial vehicles. It is also planning to expand its offerings to used passenger electric vehicles and two-wheelers.
Vidyut started in November 2021 as a commercial EV financing platform with a unique financing model where customers can buy an EV while getting the battery on a pay-per-kilometre basis. This reduces the overall cost of three-wheeler EVs by 60-65 per cent, making them cheaper than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles from day one. Xitij Kothi, co-founder of Vidyut, said that with this new initiative around used EV sale and financing options, the company is trying to ease EV ownership further by removing residual value concerns.
Vidyut currently works with the resale of three-wheeler commercial EVs for Mahindra, Piaggio, Euler Motors, Greaves, Murugappa Group’s Montra Electric, and Altigreen. The new services are available in Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, and Hyderabad, with plans to expand the service to six new cities by FY25, namely Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Lucknow, Agra, and Kanpur.
The company also plans to launch an online marketplace in the next six months to reach a wider audience.
Kothi said that after two and a half or three years, the residual value of EVs (commercial vehicles in their case) comes to around 50-60 per cent. He added that they finance vehicles where they are able to track data on the usage and health of the batteries. This helps them to calculate the residual value more accurately.
“Absence of a robust resale market is one of the biggest roadblocks in the acceleration of EV adoption,” he said. Vidyut claims that its resale platform leads to 3-4 times better resale price realisation compared to traditional second-hand dealers in the market for used EVs.
On plans for expanding to other vehicle categories like passenger electric vehicles and two-wheelers, Kothi said that they are in talks with the leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on this, and this would happen sometime. In February, Vidyut raised $10 million in its Series A fundraising, led by 3one4 Capital.
As such, the ecosystem around the residual value of batteries and EVs is growing.
EV cab operator BluSmart in December last year picked a stake in lithium battery recycling company BatX Energies. Speaking with the paper then, executives at BluSmart said the investment could help the EV cab-hailing company to build a recycling ecosystem with BatX. Company officials said a major portion of their fleet would require battery replacement. “We are a green company throughout. We don’t want even the waste to hamper the environment. This investment is a green strategy and should help build synergy for battery recycling. The business strategy of BatX is quite impressive,” a senior executive told this paper earlier this year.
BatX converts used batteries into critical materials for new batteries. The company is aiming to become a crucial supplier in the lithium-ion battery supply chain.
EV sales this financial year (FY24) witnessed a robust increase of over 41 per cent, notwithstanding the subsidy cuts and regulatory shifts. Total EV registrations in FY24 surpassed 1.6 million, which is significantly higher than last year’s 1.1 million. In FY24, the three-wheeler EV category demonstrated significant market penetration, achieving a 48.9 per cent share.
With inputs from Shreya Jai
First Published: Jul 11 2024 | 4:50 PM IST
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