Existing investors like Lightspeed, YourNest VC, 3one4 Capital, AdvantEdge VC and the family office of Pawan Munjal, executive chairman, Hero MotoCorp, also participated, as did TDK Ventures, a new investor.
ET had reported in October that the Bengaluru-based startup was set to close its first funding round in more than a year by raising the sum at a valuation of $100-120 million.
The three-year-old startup has raised $44.4 million in total so far with the latest funds, which it will use to scale its presence to five new cities the financial year ended March 2024, as per a company statement.
Also read | EV startup Exponent Energy raises $13 million in funding led by Lightspeed
The company also plans to expand its offering in the electric three-wheeler space and enter the intercity e-bus segment in 2024. It aims to deploy 1,000 e^pumps, its charging stations and have 25,000 electric vehicles powered by Exponent Energy by 2025, the statement added.
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“Exponent’s focus on the Indian commercial vehicle space is a massive opportunity which constitutes 10% of vehicles but consumes 70% of the on-road energy, with more vehicles transitioning to electric over the next few years,” Aditya Systla, partner, Eight Roads Ventures, said. This is the fund’s first investment in the electric vehicles industry.“I was impressed by Arun and his talented team when I met them in their office in Bengaluru earlier this year… This collaboration represents an exciting stride toward a more sustainable and electrified future,” Nicolas Sauvage, president, TDK Ventures, said.
“With this round, we’re set to scale operations from battery manufacturing to on-ground network presence across categories & cities, and simplify the broken energy ecosystem at scale,” Arun Vinayak, co-founder and CEO, Exponent Energy, said.
Founded by former Ather Energy executives Vinayak and Sanjay Byalal Jagannath in 2020, the company has developed a technology that claims to fully charge a vehicle in 15 minutes, much less than the regular time of at least three hours.
Exponent’s proprietary energy stack comprises a battery pack (e^pack), charging station (e^pump), and charging connector (e^plug).
In September, two-wheeler maker Ather Energy raised about $110 million from existing backer Hero MotoCorp and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC.
