Indian electric mobility startup Magenta Mobility has completed a $22 million Series A1 round with $11 million each from Morgan Stanley India Infrastructure and BP Ventures. Magenta will use all equity investments to enhance its existing logistics and last-mile delivery operations.
Headquartered in Navi Mumbai, the startup has a fleet of 800 three-wheeled electric cargo trucks that it uses to reach seven cities across the country, namely Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Mysuru and Hyderabad. , Gurugram, Noida). Magenta aims to use the latest capital injection to expand to his eight new cities over the next two years, and the fleet to his 4,000 three- and four-wheel EVs in the next year. The company partners with his OEMs locally and globally to supply fleets such as Tata Motors, Mahindra, Piago, Omega Seiki and Euler.
Magenta currently counts about 35 customers including e-commerce and grocery delivery companies such as Flipkart, BigBasket, Udaan and Amazon. The start-up has also started delivering food, grain, and even water and mattresses as commercial EV adoption spreads across the country. According to Magenta, so far he has made close to 70 million deliveries covering 6.4 million kilometers, 60% of which are through e-commerce.
Magenta founder and managing director Maxson Lewis declined to provide details on the company’s revenue, but said the startup is growing fivefold each year. The startup has his team of 200 members in offices spread across four cities.
An investment from BP Ventures is more than just a financial partnership. BP offers access to a network of strategic partners and a wealth of knowledge gleaned from his 14 previous mobility investments and his $27 million invested in India to date. Magenta Mobility is his second investment in the country by BP Ventures, following his investment in EV ride-hailing startup BluSmart last year.
The partnership will give Magenta access to Jio-BP, a joint venture between BP and India’s Reliance Industries, as the exclusive EV charging partner for the startup’s fleet. Jio-BP has a number of large EV fleet charging hubs and hundreds of public charging points in various cities and major highways across the country. The startup can also leverage BP Ventures’ network to expand its strategic partnerships.
first mover advantage
India has become a fast-growing EV market, with 2.64 million EVs registered as of March 15, according to government data produced in parliament last week. Although the market is mainly occupied by electric two-wheelers, he has more than 1.39 million electric three-wheelers in the country. With the continued expansion of e-commerce in the country and New Delhi’s goal to reduce India’s carbon footprint by 33-35% from his 2005 level by 2030, there is growing interest among stakeholders. Demand for e-mobility is expected to grow in
“The pace of growth of electric vehicles in India, especially ‘last mile’ delivery, is staggering and is playing a major role in decarbonizing cities. Gareth Burns, Vice President of BP Ventures, said in a prepared statement that BP is the first venture-led entry into the Indian last-mile delivery market and his second entry in the Indian mobility sector. I am very proud of that.
Lewis founded Magenta Mobility in February 2018 after spending 5 years in the automotive industry, 15 years in the power sector, and several years in multinational companies such as Bosch and Accenture. The startup initially began its journey to solve the problem of EV charging space as the market had yet to grow his ecosystem of electric mobility.
An early move into the EV space has helped Magenta Mobility to gain traction and attract seed funding from the Indian government’s Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) after it was spotted at the Prime Minister’s Office in 2018, said Magneta Mobility’s founder. Principal and managing director, Lewis recalled. interview.
However, with many new players entering the market and the ecosystem functioning, Magenta Mobility will go beyond just providing charging infrastructure and start handling last-mile mobility with all EV fleets. Did.
“We always wanted to focus on last mile mobility where we built this charging infrastructure as a captive service. We are,” said Lewis.
With plans to build a last-mile delivery ecosystem for electricity, Magenta has raised a total of $33.7 million from investors LetsVenture, JITO Angel Network, and Indian-American philanthropist Dr. Kiran Patel.
