Flipkart founders invest in electric vehicle start-up

New Delhi: Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal have led a $1 million investment in Ather, an electric vehicle start-up focused on designing high-speed electric two-wheelers, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

This funding round also includes investment from Raju Venkatraman, a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Medall Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, which runs a diagnostic chain in the country.

Ather was started by Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain in 2013 and was incubated at IIT Madras.

"Our aim is to develop and introduce efficient electric scooters which will benefit the country and help manage its resources more effectively," said Mehta. "We are extremely confident about this product and this funding is a reinforcement of our belief."

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal have earlier invested in companies such as offline games start-up MadRat Games and Zopper.com, a product and price discovery website.

"Growing Indian start-ups like Ather are using technology successfully to make a mark in this field. We believe the team has the right vision and approach and will be successful in giving India the next generation of impactful, technology-enabled products that will change the way we live," the Flipkart founders said in a joint statement.

Ather had raised its first round of capital in February from V. Srinivas, founder of Aerospike, and the government of India's Technology Development Board.

Currently, Ather is engaged in full-vehicle design and testing. The initial performance validation is over and manufacturing partners are currently being brought on-board. The company has a team of 15 engineers and designers and is focused on developing technology to manufacture electric vehicles.

Ather used services of another start-up, Termsheet.io, an online platform that connects angel investors and founders and then helps them close a seed financing round entirely online. TermSheet is owned by Humble Paper Inc. that provides standardized legal documents for seed round or angel funding in India.

"Being standard documents, no negotiation occurred. The angel investors were presented with signature-ready deal documents as soon as they confirmed their participation in the round. The immediate next step was to sign and send in their cheques," said Vivek Durai, founder, Humble Paper Inc.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.