Electric Motorcycle Startup Raptee Raises $3 Million In Pre-Series A Funding The funds will be allocated towards augmenting the manufacturing facility, acquiring machinery, tooling for the soon to be launched motorcycle, and to scale up the team
By Teena Jose
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Premium EV Motorcycle Startup, Raptee has raised $3 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by deep-tech VC fund Bluehill Capital. The all-equity funding round saw participation from industry stalwarts including Eugene Mayne, founder and CEO of Tristar Global (UAE); Lakshmi Narayanan, former CEO, Cognizant; Ramesh Kannan, managing director, Kaynes Technology; Chandu Nair, Director, Shankara Building Products and other HNIs from India and the UAE. The funds will be allocated towards augmenting the manufacturing facility, acquiring machinery, tooling for the soon to be launched motorcycle, and to scale up the team.
"At Raptee, we want to launch a motorcycle in a mid-premium segment for consumers who believe that EVs are a true upgrade from ICE vehicles. We are extremely fortunate to be backed by investors from the manufacturing and transportation industries who understand long-term value creation and can add strategic value for us as we gear up for production and scale up. This being our first institutional round, we're also proud to be backed by a deeptech VC, Bluehill Capital. We've been refining and testing our vehicles, and the results are very promising. We are looking forward to launching it very soon," said Dinesh Arjun, co-founder and CEO, Raptee.
According to an official release, Raptee has initiated R&D for the next line of products and is planning to expand the team size to 150 in line with the business plan. Raptee's progress has also been noticed by the Tamil Nadu Government, which has subsequently allocated a 36 acres property for the company along with other incentives for scaling up manufacturing. Furthermore, the company said it plans to expand to 100 cities in India and explore few conducive International markets over the next 3 years.
"We strongly share the vision of the Raptee team to build world-class core EV technology right here in Chennai, India in a focused and cost-effective manner. Dinesh and his co-founders have diligently built the vehicle platform indigenously with intellectual property on various aspects of the vehicle sub-system. Having evaluated over 30 EV OEMs in India and having invested deeply in the EV and clean-tech ecosystem in India, we are impressed by Raptee's cutting edge tech and excited to partner with them on their journey. We believe Raptee's motorcycles will change the face of EV 2-Wheelers in India," said Manu Iyer, CEO and Partner, Bluehill Capital.
