Automobiles. EV start-up BNC to raise ₹800 crore this year

Bharat New-Energy Company (BNC) has announced that it will raise ₹800 crore this year to fund its plan to shift to a new location and increase its production capacity five times from the present 1,00,000 electric vehicles.

The Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu-based electric two-wheeler start-up will raise the funds from private equity players. It may be remembered that Japan’s Musashi Seimitsu Industry had in January picked up a minority stake in BNC for an undisclosed sum.

At present, BNC has only one product, called ‘Challenger’, but it has plans to introduce at least two more products this year.

According to the company, its products distinguish themselves by the unique ‘exoskeleton architecture’, which makes the two-wheeler EVs as sturdy as the 125 cc or 150 cc motorcycles.

Also read: With peak sales in March, total EV registrations grow to 1.18 mn in FY23

The ‘exoskeleton architecture’ “exposes the chassis on the outside and houses the components inside—opposite of conventional vehicles,” says Anirudh Ravi Narayanan, CEO and Co-Founder of the company.

Explaining further, he told businessline that the chassis was also a ‘double cradle’, meaning the chassis runs on both sides of the vehicle. The high-tensile steel “allows for more ruggedness”, while also reducing the number of components, and thereby, lowering costs.

In essence, this architecture makes for a ‘motorcycle’ kind of look and feel, as opposed to most two-wheeler EVs that are typically puny.

BNC was launched in December 2019 by Anirudh Narayanan and Vinoth Thiruvenkataswamy.

Anirudh Narayanan, an ex-McKinsey employee, has an engineering degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and a masters in management from Yale. Vinoth Thiruvenkataswamy, who is the company’s CTO, has worked for Nissan.

After producing about a thousand vehicles, the start-up is in the process of starting production using a lithium iron phosphate battery (LFP) battery designed and manufactured in-house in their factory in Coimbatore. They are also working with a partner to localize the cell manufacturing by next-year.

Musashi will supply the drive train for the vehicles.

Also read: Ola Electric to invest ₹7,614 crore in Tamil Nadu

BNC’s current plant is in Coimbatore’s SIDCO Industrial Estate. The EV start-up is planning to shift the production base to a different and larger factory in another city.

Narayanan said the two new products will be the equivalents of 125 cc and 150 cc ICE motorcycles and they will be priced within 20 per cent of ICE counterparts.

Running cost of the vehicles would be around 20 paise per km for the smaller vehicle and 40 paise per km for the bigger, while the corresponding ICE motorcycle will cost ₹4 per km.

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