Ather drives in second e-scooter;aims to scale up presence to 24 cities by FY22

Hero MotoCorp-backed Ather Energy plans to expand its operations to around 24 cities by the end of 2021-22 as it looks to cater to customers across the country, a top company official said on Tuesday. The company, which on Tuesday introduced its second electric scooter 450X, also plans to take its overall production capacity to 1.3 lakh units per annum by the end of FY22.

With added sales infrastructure and new products, the company aims to touch revenue of Rs 1,800 crore by March 2022 from the expected Rs 540 crore in next fiscal. "With Ather 450X we are excited to be expanding across the country. This year we are starting operations in eight more cities and setting up retail partnerships across the country for the same," Ather Energy CEO and co-founder Tarun Mehta told reporters here.

The company currently sells its first product Ather 450 in Chennai and Bengaluru and now plans to set up operations across the country, including Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. "We have initiated bookings for the new model and the deliveries in the Delhi/NCR would begin by July," Mehta said.

He added that the company has inked a pact with Tamil Nadu government to set up a new production facility at Hosur. Ather currently has a plant in Bengaluru. With the new plant getting operational over the next 6-9 months, the company would be able to raise its overall capacity to 1.3 lakh units in 2021-22, Mehta said. The company aims to have a capacity to roll out 30,000 in 2020-21 fiscal.

"The enhanced capacity would help us to cut waiting periods for the two models," he added. Ather also plans to build charging infrastructure in cities where it plans to expand operations going ahead.

When asked about the number of units sold so far, Mehta declined to comment saying the company has just started to scale up operations. Ather 450X is priced at Rs 99,000 (ex-showroom Delhi) if bought with two monthly subscription packs. The Plus subscription pack is priced at Rs 1,699 while Pro pack is tagged at Rs 1,999 per month.

Without the said subscription packs, the Plus trim is priced at Rs 1.49 lakh while the Pro variant is tagged at Rs 1.59 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). Ather 450X is a significant step-up from Ather 450 with improvements across multiple key parameters. The e-scooter comes with a 6kW motor, a new 2.9 kWh lithium-ion battery that comes mated with with four riding modes.

The scooter can go from 0 to 40 kmph in just 3.3 seconds and real life range of 85 km in city conditions. Ather 450X comes with a 4G sim card and Wi-Fi along with Bluetooth connectivity, allowing riders to manage phone calls and music on the touch screen dashboard.

The new touch screen dashboard comes with Snapdragon Quad Core processor. The scooter utilises Android Open Source to offer map navigation, on-board diagnostics and other unique features like over-the-air updates among others. Ather Energy was founded in 2013 by IIT Madras alumni Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain. Currently, it is backed by founders of Flipkart, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Hero MotoCorp and Tiger Global.

The company launched its first electric scooter - Ather 450 in 2018.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)