EV startup Altigreen opens first 3-wheeler showroom in Bengaluru, plans 30 more by March end

Karnataka’s IT/BT Minister CN Ashwath Narayan opened the showroom, which will also handle servicing, retailing parts, and charging. The Minister quoted reports to say the EV market would be worth Rs 475 billion by 2025as concern for the environment has led people to increase their interest in electric vehicles

The 10-year-old Altigreen is headquartered in Bengaluru and operates a modern manufacturing facility at Malur in Kolar district with a production capacity of 4500 vehicles a month.

The company plans to ramp up production capacity by building assembly facilities across the country either on its own or with local partners for contract manufacturing, the company’s founder & CEO Amitabh Saran told ET.

The three-wheeler takes about 15 minutes to fully charge with which the vehicle can run 160 km, he said, and added that it costs just about 90 paise per kilometre as against about Rs 4 per kilometre for a conventional commercial three-wheeler.

“We have built everything from scratch here in Karnataka, with 26 global patents and with 93% domestic value-add,” Saran, a former NASA engineer, said. The company , he added, plans to have 30 dealers all over the country by March end. Each vehicle carries an all-inclusive on road price of Rs 4.4 lakh.

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It was the mind-boggling number of deaths due to air pollution in India that led Saran to return to India from the US and set up an EV startup, Magnum Ventures promoter MP Shyam said.

Altigreen’s commercial 3-wheeler recently did 150 plus kms on an inter-city drive between Mysore Palace and Bangalore Palace on a single charge in about six hours, a company statement said.

The company had, in February this year, raised Rs 300 crore ($ 40 million) in a fresh funding round led by Sixth Sense Ventures, along with RIL subsidiary Reliance New Energy, Xponentia Capital, Accurant International, USA and Momentum Venture Capital, Singapore.