List of Battery Swapping Solution Providers in India

On Aug 12, 2020, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways released a statement that electric 2Ws and 3Ws can be sold without a battery pack. The move is expected to boost the battery swapping infrastructure and ‘Energy as a service’ business models. The pay-as-you-go approach will not only lower the upfront acquisition cost of the EVs, but also significantly reduce the waiting time needed to recharge a battery pack.

This post features the leading battery swapping solutions providers in the country (in no particular order).

Sun Mobility

Headquarters – Bengaluru | Founded – April 2017 | Co-founder – Chetan Maini

A 50:50 joint venture between Maini Group and SUN Group, and the most prominent player in India’s battery swapping space for electric 3Ws and e-buses. In Sep 2020, Bosch acquired 26% stake in the company.

Chetan Maini led Sun Mobility offers an open-architecture Energy Infrastructure Solution, including its own Smart Batteries that can be swapped at its Quick Interchange Stations. Provides a full stack solution including mobile apps for drivers and web interface for managers to onboard drivers and map vehicles.

The company has a focus on shared mobility segment and has partnered with OEMs and shared mobility providers to deploy its energy infrastructure and offer battery swapping services. Sun Mobility aims to power 1 million EVs by 2025 and save 8.5 million tons of CO2.

Also Read: What is Battery Swapping? Opportunity and Challenges

Also Read: List of leading EV Charging solution providers in India

Battery Smart

Funded in 2019, Battery Smart is among the biggest battery-swapping networks for electric two- and three-wheelers. Battery Smart has completed 12 million swaps, set up 650+ live swap stations across 25 cities, and works with 25,000 customers (as per a company statement).

Blume Ventures, Orios Ventures, Tiger Global and BlackSoil are investors in the company. Debt funding from Stride Ventures.

Gogoro

The Taiwanese battery-swapping giant has 6 operational battery-swapping stations in Delhi-NCR. Signed an MoU with the Maharashtra Government to invest more than $500 million in manufacturing vehicles, smart battery packs, and battery swap stations, and $1 billion in smart battery infrastructure deployment.

Lithion Power

Headquarters – New Delhi | Founded – 2016 | CEO – Piyush Gupta

Lithion Power provides an Intelligent Energy platform for battery swapping infrastructure. Focused on providing swapping solutions for electric 3Ws and 2Ws. Claims to be India’s largest “Battery as a service” operator and provides charged Li-ion batteries via its network of Lithion Swapping Points in Delhi and NCR adjacent areas of Haryana. The solution also comprises of software that allows asset tracking and monitor energy utilisation. Each swapping takes less than 5 mins.

According to reports, the company planned to invest $ 1 billion to create an ecosystem for EV drivers to swap batteries.

Partnerships – Working with EV OEMs, battery manufacturers, fleet operators, asset managers & other entities in the EV ecosystem.

Scale – Plans a multi-fold augmentation of its battery swapping infrastructure in coming months.

VoltUp

Headquarters – Mumbai | Founded – 2019 | CEO – Siddharth Kabra

Provides a battery swapping and smart charging technology platform for EV owners, Logistics Players and OEMs, working on a pay-as-you-go model.

VoltUp has designed and manufactured EV Batteries, Battery Management System and Charging Stations which are housed on its platform to provide instant charge through battery swapping. Going forward, the company also plans to integrate solar energy to power its charging portals.

Partnerships – Tied up with a few OEMs for strategic collaborations. Coming up with a swappable L5 electric 3W with one of the OEMs shortly. VoltUp is also looking to finalise partnerships with multiple logistics players.

In the last week of Dec 2020, VoltUp announced its partnership with HPCL for opening battery swapping centres. The partnership is looking to open 50 battery swapping solutions centres across India by Jun 2021.

Scale – Deployed 6 stations in Jaipur and 3 in Kolkata. Plans to launch in Delhi NCR and Bangalore later this year apart from planned expansion to three more cities in Rajasthan.

Esmito

Headquarters – Chennai | Founded – 2018 | CEO – Prabhjot Kaur

Housed at IIT Madras Research Park, Esmito offers a B2B SaaS platform for EV Infrastructure management including battery swapping management. The cloud-based platform enables real-time monitoring, control, and management of EV Infrastructure, as well as capable of performing battery performance analytics and can effectively integrate with third-party systems.

Scale – Presence in 6 states across India collaborating with 5 operators for multiple pilot projects. 320 charging ports, 3,00,000 km monitored, 10,000 swaps performed.

Flowtrik is another IIT Madras-based start-up (founded in 2019) that manufactures the hardware for EV charging, including bulk charging portals used at swapping stations.

ChargeUp

Headquarters – New Delhi | Founded – 2019 | CEO – Varun Goenka

E-Chargeup Solutions operates battery swapping stations for electric 3Ws. Through its dealer network, the start-up offers ‘Battery as a service’ to electric 3W drivers. It sources indigenously developed Li-ion batteries from Gurugram based Greenfuel Energy Solutions.

Scale – Operational in Delhi NCR since May 2019 and servicing to 900 customers per month at their Mayur Vihar Chargeup-HUB. Further expanding to North Delhi and plans to open 50 more HUBS in Delhi NCR. Aims to provide services to 2.4 million drivers through its dealer network.

RACE Energy

Headquarters – Hyderabad| Founded – 2018 | Co-founders – Arun Sreyas and Gautham Maheswaran

Huddle accelerated RACEnergy is building a battery swapping network for electric 3-wheelers. The start-up is pursuing an approach to create both demand and supply by simultaneously working on conversion kits, battery packs, swapping stations. As a go-to-market strategy, RACEnergy is creating the demand for swapping solutions by retrofitting ICE 3 Wheelers into electric.

BatteryPool

Headquarters – Pune | Founded – 2018

BatteryPool provides IoT enabled, battery agnostic swapping stations and an API-first software ecosystem that fleets can integrate into existing software ecosystems. The company also works with battery manufacturing partners to provide an integrated solution to operators needing battery packs with the station. BatteryPool previously raised funds from the Department of Science and Tech (Government of India), 100X.VC, and angel investors. The startup invested Rs 20 lakh and raised Rs 25 lakh via grants and an angel round along with the investment from 100X.VC.

Scale – Deployed 50+ Swapping stations across India as of Sep 2021.

Cover Image Source: Esmito

Last Updated: Sep 11, 2023