Ather Energy raises $128 million

Recently, leading Electric Mobility brand Ather Energy

announced that it has raised $128 million. Ather received this funding from

National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) and existing investor Hero MotoCorp.

Previously, the popular two wheeler maker, Hero MotoCorp had announced that it has invested Rs 420 crore (about $54 million) in Ather in January. The co-founder, and CEO of Ather Energy, Tarun Mehta, said that this capital will be utilized the fuel the expansion of its manufacturing facilities, enhance its research and development, and increase its charging infrastructure, and grow its retail network.

Mehta said, “The largest chunk of investment will go into investing in capacity – not just our own capacity but also that of the supply chain so that it can scale quickly. Overall our components are fairly unique, so we have to make sure that our suppliers can invest for us. So a fair bit of capacity will go towards that.”

However, he did not reveal the valuation of Ather but told that the EV brand is yet to reach $1 billion in value. He commented, “Ather is considerably undervalued still… People are starting to discover real value gradually….In a way I take responsibility for that. As founders, around Covid-19 or just before Covid we got so focused on operations and fixing the nuts and bolts of this business that we decided we did not want to raise more capital. But now we feel like we have underfunded the business. I don't completely regret it because some of the starvation has brought in ridiculous efficiencies and very high-quality decisions.”