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Indian electric mobility startup Magenta Mobility has closed a $22 million Series A1 round, backed by $11 million each from Morgan Stanley India Infrastructure and BP Ventures. Magenta will use all equity investment to grow its existing logistics and last-mile delivery fleet.
Navi’s Mumbai-headquartered startup has a fleet of 800 three-wheeler electric cargo trucks that deliver goods in seven cities across the country — mainly Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Mysuru, Hyderabad, Gurugram and Noida. Magenta aims to use the latest capital infusion to expand to eight new cities over the next two years and grow its fleet to 4,000 three- and four-wheeler EVs next year. The company collaborates with local and international OEMs to supply fleets such as Tata Motors, Mahindra, Peugeot, Omega Seiki and Uller.
Magenta currently has around 35 clients including e-commerce and grocery delivery companies Flipkart, BigBasket, Udaan and Amazon. The startup has started handling delivery of food, grains and water and mattresses as commercial EV adoption gains traction in the country. Magenta has made nearly 70 million deliveries covering 6.4 million kilometers, of which 60% are from e-commerce.
Maxon Lewis, founder and managing director of Magenta, wouldn’t share details about the company’s revenue, but said the startup has grown 5x year-on-year. The company has a team of 200 members based in offices in four cities.
The investment from BP Ventures is more than a financial partnership. BP brings to the table a wealth of knowledge from its network of strategic partners as well as from 14 prior operational investments and $27 million invested in India to date. Magenta Mobility is BP Ventures’ second investment in the country after it invested in EV ride-hailing startup BluSmart last year.
The partnership will see Jio-BP, a joint venture between BP and Indian Reliance Industries, become the exclusive EV charging partner for the startup’s fleet. Jio-BP has several large EV fleet charging centers as well as hundreds of public charging points in various cities and major roads across the country. The startup will enable the BP Ventures network to leverage its strategic partnerships.
First mover advantage
According to government data released in Parliament last week, India has become the fastest growing EV market with 2.64 million EVs registered as of March 15. While the market is largely dominated by electric two-wheelers, the country has over 1.39 million electric three-wheelers. The ongoing expansion of e-commerce in the country and New Delhi’s aim to reduce India’s carbon footprint by 33–35 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 are expected to increase stakeholders’ interest in e-mobility.
“The pace of growth of electric vehicles in India, especially in ‘last mile’ delivery, is extraordinary and is playing a major role in decarbonising cities. We are very proud to lead BP Ventures into the Indian last-mile delivery market, making it our second venture in the Indian mobility sector,” Gareth Burns, Vice President, BP Ventures, said in a statement.
Lewis founded Magenta Mobility in February 2018 after spending five years in the automotive industry, 15 years in the electrical sector and at various international organizations including Bosch and Accenture. As the market has yet to develop an electric mobility ecosystem, the startup embarked on its journey to solve the EV charging space problem.
After being noticed by the Prime Minister’s Office in 2018, it helped Magenta Mobility gain some attention and attract seed funding. Interview
However, as the ecosystem comes into play with the addition of several new players entering the market, Magenta Mobility goes beyond providing the charging infrastructure to handle last-mile mobility using its entire EV fleet.
We always knew we wanted to focus on last-mile mobility when we built this charging infrastructure as a captive service. Effectively, our charging infrastructure is being used in last-mile mobility,” said Lewis.
With its plan to build an ecosystem for electricity last-mile delivery, Magenta has raised a total of $33.7 million, with investors including LetsVenture, JITO Angel Network and Indian-American philanthropist Dr. Kiran Patel.
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