EVeez plans to expand its fleet size to 4,500 e2Ws while adding four more cities to provide its services, said Gaurav Rathore, Co-founder, EVeez, during an interaction with Mobility Outlook.
The company had planned to have a fleet size of 5,000 e2Ws by December 2022, but semiconductor shortages slowed its progress. Furthermore, with the new AES 156 battery specs, the vehicle deployment rate has also decreased in the last two months, according to the Co-founder.
Rathore stated that the company has already placed orders for 1,500 more vehicles which will be deployed by the end of March 2023. Meanwhile, an additional order is also in the pipeline to increase the fleet size to cater to the demand.
With the current fleet of 3,000 e2Ws, the company is operational in Delhi NCR along with Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. The Co-founder said that the biggest fleet deployment for the company is in Delhi NCR, with about two third of the vehicles being in the city.
Going forward, the increased fleet size will help the company expand its reach. Rathore revealed that EVeez plans to launch operations in Mumbai, Pune, Chandigarh, and Ahmedabad within six months. He described it as a balanced strategy to expand operations gradually.
“We are adding city by city and even Delhi is a big market in terms of huge potential to grow,” he said. The company currently has about 2,000 bikes in Delhi, and the need could be around 50,000 or one lakh bikes, he stated.
Meanwhile, adding an e3W fleet is also in the works, but only for players looking for vehicles rather than driver partners, Rathore explained.
Powering The Vehicles
Across its operational areas, the company has partnerships with several battery-swapping companies, including SUN Mobility and BatterySmart. According to him, the company is looking to partner with more battery-swapping brands, particularly in Hyderabad and Kolkata, where the existing partners’ operation is limited.
Meanwhile, EVeez is also looking into fast charging options and has been testing the technology with a few companies. According to him, if the testing goes as planned, EVeez will only offer fast charging over battery swapping in the new cities of operation.
Investing In Growth
During the interaction, it was learnt that the company has seen a total investment of nearly $1 million since it started its operations in June 2020. However, the Co-founder claimed that the current fleet size is worth INR 25 crore, which is far more than what it has invested. He justified by saying that EVeez owns only 20% of its current fleet to follow an asset-light model, with the remaining 80% leased or financed. He believes the fleet's ratio will remain 25:75 between owned and leased/financed vehicles in the future as well.
Notably, the company intends to invest in technology to support operations efficiently. “We're working on building an in-house R&D team that will be able to manage all of our vehicles and components,” the Co-founder said, adding that the series A round, which is scheduled to be raised in April 2023, will be used to build the team.
The company has developed hardware and software capabilities, including manufacturing BMS, motor controllers, and other components. However, all these components will be used to maintain the fleet rather than getting into EV manufacturing.
“We are working with all possible players to have a deeper understanding of the components and work with the OEM partners to have better components. We are also moving towards a predictive maintenance regime,” he added, explaining that analytics will take place, and the company's in-house team will notify the driver partners on the health of the vehicle and the required parts to be changed to avoid a breakdown.
The Road Ahead
With the idea that the industry is moving from an era of ownership to subscription, Rathore explained that the company does not aim to stick with one technology or category. For the near future, EVeez plans to go beyond just the logistics sector, the co-founder revealed. He believes that there is tremendous potential to work in the mobility sector. As a result, the company is looking to expand its collaboration beyond logistics firms to include finance and other service brands with employees who are constantly on the move.
Besides, the company is also evaluating use case solutions for people looking for subscribed vehicles for personal mobility, Rathore stated. However, EVeez doesn’t want to get into the micro-mobility sector because of the challenges in reverse logistics, he added.
Also Read