EV financing startup Vidyut bags $2.5M from Flourish Ventures

Full stack EV ecosystem startup Vidyut has raised $2.5 million in a new funding round from Flourish Ventures, a global VC firm.

The newly-raised funds will be used to expand the company’s Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) offerings in both passenger and commercial electric vehicle segments, the company said.

BaaS model allows users to lease battery usage instead of buying the battery upfront. This allows customers to reduce the upfront costs of purchasing an EV significantly.

Vidyut’s BaaS offerings are able to bring down the upfront acquisition cost of three-wheelers by almost 35% to 40%.

“Through our BaaS offering, we are able to bring the upfront acquisition cost of EVs down by almost 35% to 40%. It reduces the monthly cash outflow for consumers by 10% to 15%,” said Xitij Kothi, Co-founder, Vidyut, in an interview with YourStory.

On response to the company’s BaaS offering from both commercial and personal commute customers, he said, “I think we've seen a phenomenal response to our BaaS offering on the commercial side. These businesses face concerns around unknown recurring capital expenditure, uncertainty around battery life, battery replacement cost, etc. Our model addresses that head on. Hence, at least on the commercial side, we've been able to see a very good response. On the personal vehicle side also, I think the consumer response has been decent.”

Currently, the personal commute segment accounts for 20% of the Bengaluru-based startup’s overall business while 80% continues to be driven by the commercial vehicle segment.

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Additionally, majority of the company’s business is business-to-consumer (B2C) with about 15-20% being fleet owners or business-to-business (B2B) facing.

Vidyut expects adoption of BaaS to grow in the passenger vehicle segment, going forward as the company increases its market presence and looks to tailor its offerings to the customer base.

Additionally, Vidyut is also in talks with original equipment manufacturers to double down on their offerings in the personal commute segment. In September last year, the company partnered with JSW MG Motor to launch the BaaS model.

However, Kothi did not disclose the names of the OEMs as the talks are yet to be finalised.

Vidyut currently has a 15% month-on-month dispersal growth. Disbursal growth refers to the amount of loans given out for electric vehicles.

“We are looking to at least double, if not more, our overall AUM by the next financial year,” Kothi said.

The company also has a 80% loss recovery on its delinquent assets, which Kothi notes, is significant compared to traditional petrol and diesel vehicle industry benchmark.

Founded in 2021 by ex-Swiggy and Bounce executives Kothi and Gaurav Srivastava, Vidyut last raised $10 million in a Series A equity and debt funding round in February last year.

The company is also into the sale and financing of used EVs to support the resale of three-wheeler commercial EVs across Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, with operations spread across 30 Indian cities.